Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

“Love, Harold.”

It was not so many years ago — despite the fact that he knew otherwise, despite what Andy had been telling him since he was seventeen — that he was still maintaining a sort of small, steady hope that he might get better. On especially bad days, he would repeat the Philadelphia surgeon’s words to himself—“the spine has wonderful reparative qualities”—almost like a chant. A few years after meeting Andy, when he was in law school, he had finally summoned the courage to suggest this to him, had said aloud the prediction he had treasured and clung to, hoping that Andy might nod and say, “That’s exactly right. It’ll just take time.”

But Andy had snorted. “He told you that ?” he asked. “It’s not going to get better, Jude; as you get older, it’ll get worse.” Andy had been looking down at his ankle as he spoke, using tweezers to pick out shreds of dead flesh from a wound he’d developed, when he suddenly froze, and even without seeing Andy’s face, he could tell he was chagrined. “I’m sorry, Jude,” he said, looking up, still cupping his foot in his hand. “I’m sorry I can’t tell you differently.” And when he couldn’t answer, he sighed. “You’re upset.”

He was, of course. “I’m fine,” he managed to say, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Andy.

“I’m sorry, Jude,” Andy repeated, quietly. He had two settings, even then: brusque and gentle, and he had experienced both of them often, sometimes in a single appointment.

“But one thing I promise,” he said, returning to the ankle, “I’ll always be here to take care of you.”

And he had. Of all the people in his life, it was in some ways Andy who knew the most about him: Andy was the only person he’d been naked in front of as an adult, the only person who was familiar with every physical dimension of his body. Andy had been a resident when they met, and he had stayed in Boston for his fellowship, and his postfellowship, and then the two of them had moved to New York within months of each other. He was an orthopedic surgeon, but he treated him for everything, from chest colds to his back and leg problems.

“Wow,” Andy said dryly, as he sat in his examining room one day hacking up phlegm (this had been the previous spring, shortly before he had turned twenty-nine, when a bout of bronchitis had been snaking its way through the office), “I’m so glad I specialized in orthopedics. This is such good practice for me. This is exactly what I thought I’d do with my training.”

He had started to laugh, but then his coughing had begun again and Andy had thumped him on the back. “Maybe if someone recommended a real internist to me, I wouldn’t have to keep going to a chiropractor for all my medical needs,” he said.

“Mmm,” Andy said. “You know, maybe you should start seeing an internist. God knows it’d save me a lot of time, and a shitload of headaches as well.” But he would never go to see anyone but Andy, and he thought — although they had never discussed it — that Andy wouldn’t want him to, either.

For all Andy knew about him, he knew relatively little about Andy. He knew that he and Andy had gone to the same college, and that Andy was a decade older than he, and that Andy’s father was Gujarati and his mother was Welsh, and that he had grown up in Ohio. Three years ago, Andy had gotten married, and he had been surprised to be invited to the wedding, which was small and held at Andy’s in-laws’ house on the Upper West Side. He had made Willem come with him, and was even more surprised when Andy’s new wife, Jane, had thrown her arms around him when they were introduced and said, “The famous Jude St. Francis! I’ve heard so much about you!”

“Oh, really,” he’d said, his mind filling with fear, like a flock of flapping bats.

“Nothing like that,” Jane had said, smiling (she was a doctor as well: a gynecologist). “But he adores you, Jude; I’m so glad you came.” He had met Andy’s parents as well, and at the end of the evening, Andy had slung an arm around his neck and given him a hard, awkward kiss on the cheek, which he now did every time they saw each other. Andy always looked uncomfortable doing it, but also seemed compelled to keep doing it, which he found both funny and touching.

He appreciated Andy in many ways, but he appreciated most his unflappability. After they had met, after Andy had made it difficult not to continue seeing him by showing up at Hood, banging on their door after he had missed two follow-up appointments (he hadn’t forgotten; he had just decided not to go) and ignored three phone calls and four e-mails, he had resigned himself to the fact that it might not be bad to have a doctor — it seemed, after all, inevitable — and that Andy might be someone he could trust. The third time they met, Andy took his history, or what he would provide of it, and wrote down the facts he would tell him without comment or reaction.

And indeed, it was only years later — a little less than four years ago — that Andy had directly mentioned his childhood. This had been during his and Andy’s first big fight. They’d had skirmishes, of course, and disagreements, and once or twice a year Andy would deliver a long lecture to him (he saw Andy every six weeks — though more frequently these days — and could always anticipate which appointment would be the Lecture Appointment by the terseness with which Andy would greet him and conduct his examination) that covered what Andy considered his perplexing and infuriating unwillingness to take proper care of himself, his maddening refusal to see a therapist, and his bizarre reluctance to take pain medication that would probably improve his quality of life.

The fight had concerned what Andy had retroactively come to consider a botched suicide attempt. This had been right before New Year’s, and he had been cutting himself, and he had cut too close to a vein, and it had resulted in a great, sloppy, bloody mess into which he had been forced to involve Willem. In the examining room that night, Andy had refused to speak to him, he was so angry, and had actually muttered to himself as he made his stitches, each as neat and tiny as if he were embroidering them.

Even before Andy had opened his mouth at his next appointment, he had known that he was furious. He had actually considered not coming in for his checkup at all, except he knew if he didn’t, Andy would simply keep calling him — or worse, calling Willem, or worse yet, Harold — until he showed up.

“I should fucking have had you hospitalized,” were Andy’s first words to him, followed by, “I’m such a fucking idiot.”

“I think you’re overreacting,” he’d begun, but Andy ignored him.

“I happen to believe you weren’t trying to kill yourself, or I’d’ve had you committed so fast your head would’ve spun,” he said. “It’s only because statistically, anyone who cuts themselves as much as you do, and for as many years as you have, is in less immediate danger of suicide than someone who’s less consistently self-injurious.” (Andy was fond of statistics. He sometimes suspected he made them up.) “But Jude, this is crazy, and that was way too close. Either you start seeing a shrink immediately or I’m going to commit you.”

“You can’t do that,” he’d said, furious himself now, although he knew Andy could: he had looked up the laws of involuntary commitment in New York State, and they were not in his favor.

“You know I can,” Andy had said. He was almost shouting at this point. Their appointments were always after office hours, because they sometimes chatted afterward if Andy had time and was in a good mood.