Joshua Ferris - To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

My patient informed me that she was pregnant just as I entered the room. She was in her first trimester and only now beginning to show, but it was self-evident from the fullness of her cheeks and the rosy flush of her skin. A new and plumper blood was making her pulse at the neck. She had the glow of an apple.

I can’t help but be attracted to pregnant women. Unless they’re malnourished. I’ll see a malnourished pregnant woman on the subway sometimes, big in the belly but with stick-figure arms and hair like a rat’s, and I want to buy her a space heater. I want to yell at her parents. I remember going up to this real malnourished-looking pregnant lady on the G train one time and asking her if she’d like a free dinner at Junior’s. She couldn’t believe I was trying to pick her up on the G train, a pregnant woman with a ring on her finger. I hadn’t noticed the ring. It was one hell of a big ring. I tried to convince her that I wasn’t trying to pick her up. I offered to give her fifty bucks for cooking oil. That just made matters worse. Turns out she was a famous model. I’ve seen her on billboards.

I asked my patient when she was due. She said April. Then asked her to open wide. I percussed what I thought was the start of a cavity.

“Any pain here?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

“You might have the start of a cavity,” I said to her, “but we’ll just have to wait until April, after the baby comes. If there’s no pain, it’s nothing to worry about right now.”

Well, how about that, I thought, hearing my own words. If there’s no pain, it’s nothing to worry about right now. You’ve got plenty of time. Worry about it later. Until then, enjoy yourself. You’ve got so much to look forward to. Really: you’re flush with good health, and there’s new life on the way. What’s the point of dwelling on all the shit and the misery?

That was how other people thought, I thought. I was having a thought that was identical to other people’s. I was on the inside with this thought. No longer alien to the in, but in the in. I was in the very in. Afraid of losing it, I took up the explorer again, ostensibly to have another look inside my patient’s mouth, but in actual fact to dwell in the in. I wanted to go in even deeper. The people who thought like this, the regular everyday people who walked their dogs and posted their updates and put off going to the dentist, happily allowed the inevitable to just sort of slide right off their backs. Some of them, like my patient the marketing executive, didn’t even let themselves get worked up by what was upon them in the here and now. If he didn’t feel like he had a cavity, he didn’t treat it. If a patient was pregnant, she waited until April. If someone else didn’t feel like flossing, they said screw it, I’ll do it a different day. Not interested in hearing all the ways you’ve failed to maintain optimum health? Skip your appointment with the dentist. Have a drink instead. See a movie. Pet the dog. Give birth to a baby and go in and watch the baby as she sleeps in the crib. My God, I thought. This is how they think. This is why it comes so easily to them. It’s this simple.

“Will you excuse me?” I asked my patient.

I stood up with the intention of heading straight for Connie, but she was already standing there, just outside the room, looking in at me.

“Do you need me?” I asked when I reached the doorway.

“No,” she said.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re not standing there like it’s nothing,” I said.

“Let’s talk about it later,” she said.

“There’s an it? What’s the it?”

“Later,” she said.

“No, now.”

“You’re in with a patient now. It can wait.”

“I’m done with that patient,” I said. “There’s never been a healthier patient in this office. I was just coming to tell you that. I know you hate it when I drag you over to look at patients, but it’s not sickness or age or death this time. Look at her,” I said. “Have you ever seen anyone healthier or happier in your entire life?”

She peered inside. “What am I missing?” she asked.

“Don’t you see it?”

“I see a woman in a chair,” she said.

“She’s pregnant,” I said. “Don’t you see? Well, okay, just take my word for it. What’s important is her plan of action. She’s got the start of a cavity, but she’s going to wait until after the baby comes to have it filled.”

“Isn’t that standard procedure?”

“If there’s no pain, sure, for pregnant ladies. But not for the rest of us.”

“I’m not following.”

“Why shouldn’t it be that way for the rest of us?” I asked. “Why not just go with it? Just walk the dog and send the tweets and eat the scones and play with the hamsters and ride the bicycles and watch the sunsets and stream the movies and never worry about any of it? I didn’t know it could be that easy. I didn’t know that until just now. That sounds good to me. I think I might be able to do that. Who couldn’t do that? It would take somebody mentally ill not to do that, and I’m not mentally ill.”

She looked at me.

“I’m not,” I said. “Listen, do me a favor. Go out with me. On a date, I mean. Give me a second chance. Give me… what would this be, the sixth chance? I’m a changed man. I mean it. Let’s not even date. Do you want to get married? I do. I really do. What’s that look? Why that look, Connie? I really do want to marry you. I want us to have kids. I know I said I never wanted to have kids, but that was before. I get it now. I want you to be as healthy and happy as that woman in there.”

“I’m quitting, Paul,” she said.

“You’re what?”

“Quitting.”

Everything got quiet.

“Quitting?” I said. “What for?”

“Do you really have to ask what for?”

“But you’re the office manager,” I said. “And I love you.”

She didn’t respond.

“I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” I said. “What about everything I just said? You won’t give me another chance?”

She smiled one of those smiles that are so quick to disappear that when you think about them later it’s what puts you over the edge. I hated how feelingly she reached out for my arm, how sweet her grip was.

“Let’s just get some things squared away,” she said, “and then I’ll start looking for my replacement.”

I moved like a zombie through the rest of the day. Connie posted an ad online within an hour of her announcement, and by the end of the week, she had half a dozen candidates lined up. There was no talking her out of it. She was moving to Philadelphia with Ben. He had a job there teaching poetry.

“You don’t think you’re making a mistake?”

“No,” she said. “Do you want to look at these résumés?”

“This is really what you want? To live with a poet?”

“Yes,” she said.

“With the hot plate? And the lice?”

“What hot plate? What are you talking about?”

“Can he afford the rent?”

“Are you going to look at these résumés or not?”

At night I went home and watched the games. I had neglected all of August and now half of September. I couldn’t both catch up with the old games and watch the new ones without dedicating myself entirely. I drank and ordered takeout and watched them back-to-back-to-back into the early morning hours.

“I can’t give you any more time,” she said toward the end of September. “I’ve quit, Paul. I have to go. Do you want to look at these résumés, or should I do it?”

“I’ll do it,” I said.

But I never did.

We had a solid summer that year, maintaining a lead over the Yankees all of July and most of August. We saw some heroic play from Pedroia and Ellsbury and, despite injuries, some solid pitching. Heading into September, there was no reason to doubt that we would clinch the pennant and enter not the first, and not the second, but the third World Series in seven years. But then something of an ancient order began to impose itself.