A. Yehoshua - Open Heart

The room looked dark to me, as if nobody were there, and, not wanting to leave her alone, I remained where I was. Indeed, the door proved to be locked, and there was nobody in the secretary’s room either. From my position at the end of the corridor I could see that she was very agitated, not only because she didn’t like being left alone but also because she was evidently not used to waiting for her husband. She sat down on the bench opposite the office and then stood up and began pacing up and down, until she caught sight of me standing at the end of the hall. “Are you sure this is the place?” she called out angrily, as if I were capable of leading her astray. When I reassured her, she said unexpectedly and somewhat bitterly, immediately giving rise to new hope in me, “So we hurried back for nothing.” Then she sent me away, after refusing my offer to go and look for her husband. I went to the nursery, to see if Michaela had already taken Shiva, and saw that the baby was still there. The nurse told me that she had been restless, crying for most of the time since I returned her to her crib, and suggested that I take her home without waiting for Michaela. I put her into her sling, but instead of leaving right away, and despite the fact that I didn’t like hanging around the hospital with the baby, I went back to Sir Geoffrey’s office to see if Lazar had come to get his wife. From the end of the corridor I saw that she was still sitting on the bench, erect, her legs crossed, smoking a cigarette, and my heart melted with love and concern. I went up to her and asked, “What’s going on? Where’s Lazar?” She shrugged her shoulders with an unfamiliar melancholy smile, as if she feared the worst. “Don’t worry,” I said, “he must be somewhere in the hospital. Let me leave the baby with you for a minute and I’ll go and look for him.” She put out her cigarette and agreed with alacrity, as if glad to have the opportunity to play grandmother for a while. I turned to the surgical wing, since I knew that the equipment Sir Geoffrey wanted to give Lazar was there. But in the surgical wing they told me that the two of them had left half an hour before for the emergency room. “Why?” I asked in surprise, and was told that Sir Geoffrey had taken Lazar to undergo some tests. I rushed breathlessly to the emergency room, to the astonishment of the phlegmatic Englishmen I passed as I ran, who up to now had no doubt taken me for one of them. In the familiar emergency room I immediately spotted Lazar’s mane of gray hair. He was lying on one of the beds without his jacket and shoes, his shirt sleeves rolled up, shaking his head and smiling apologetically at the head of the department, Dr. Arnold, a quiet, rather modest man, who was explaining something on the EKG strips to Sir Geoffrey. “Where’s Dori?” he asked in Hebrew as soon as he saw me. “She’s waiting for you outside Sir Geoffrey’s office,” I said. “Should I run and get her?”

“There’s no need for that. She’ll only get frightened. I’ll be out of here in a minute,” replied Lazar, and added with a smile, “Just imagine, they wanted to keep me here!”

It turned out that when he had examined the dialysis machine Sir Geoffrey had offered him, he decided to check out various electrical apparatus attached to it too, such as the sphygmomanometer and the EKG, and out of curiosity asked to be connected to them. The random EKG showed runs of a rapid heartbeat, which Lazar had not felt at all because of their short duration. The technician immediately noticed the abnormality and hurried to call the cardiology resident, who examined the EKG and wanted to hospitalize Lazar on the spot. But Lazar, who felt no different from usual, and Sir Geoffrey, who suspected that something might not be adequately calibrated in the machine, which had not been used for a long time, asked for a repeat examination on another machine, and those results were better, if not completely normal. A more senior cardiologist who was summoned to examine Lazar suggested that the whole thing could be attributed to the excitement and stress of the trip. This cardiologist was of Pakistani origin — English physicians are far more cautious about confusing the body and the soul. At this stage Sir Geoffrey became fed up with the arguments and took Lazar to the emergency room, where he felt he could rely on the quiet, confident Dr. Arnold, who gave Lazar a thorough examination and decided that there may have been a mistake and that the EKG results were almost normal. Lazar’s blood pressure, however, was very high, and he gave him a ten-milligram sublingual capsule of nifedipine, which immediately caused his blood pressure to drop. He also gave him medication for the next few days and instructed him to continue treatment when he got back to Israel. And then he turned to me and began explaining the EKG results, so that I would be able to translate them into Hebrew for the benefit of Lazar, whose visit he evidently saw me as responsible for, in some sense, since I was here at his initiative, after all.

“I didn’t feel a thing. I didn’t feel a thing, and I don’t feel anything now either,” Lazar apologized repeatedly to his wife for the little incident, and then turned to admire the baby and try to ingratiate himself with her. Shiva had been removed from her sling and was lying comfortably in the arms of the woman whom I suddenly wanted to drop to my knees before and beg for forgiveness for my earlier failure. Lazar indeed seemed perfectly healthy. And although I could have added something at this stage and shed some light on the medical picture with the little I had understood of Dr. Arnold’s analysis of the EKG results, I decided not to add to the general confusion but to leave the Lazars with Sir Geoffrey, for I knew I would be seeing them again later, at the little reception the hospital had arranged for Lazar to recruit Jewish and non-Jewish supporters for the hospital in Israel. And that evening, in a black suit and a red tie, freshly washed and combed, Lazar looked healthy and fit. He spoke vigorously about the problems of our hospital in Tel Aviv, in a heavy Israeli accent and a basic but surprisingly effective English, which reminded me again of our trip together to India. Michaela, who was sitting next to me, listened to him with a mocking smile as she secretly breast-fed Shivi, for whom we were unable to find a baby-sitter.

My parents’ visit to Glasgow, which my aunt was looking forward to so much, was somewhat spoiled by a severe cold that my mother had probably caught from the baby. When my father told me about it on the phone, I remembered that streptococci in infants can cause a dangerous abscess in the throats of adults, and I rebuked myself for not warning my mother to avoid close contact with Shivi when she showed the first symptoms of her cold. Although my aunt looked after my mother devotedly and the two of them no doubt enjoyed reliving their childhood experiences, they were forced to stay at home while my father toured the wild and beautiful landscapes of the north of Scotland and the Isle of Skye with my uncle and my bachelor cousin, who was a physician like me. Because of my mother’s illness they had to stay in Glasgow for an extra three days, and when I met them at the train station and saw her pale face and heard her dry cough, I decided that in spite of the help she and my father gave Michaela with the baby, I should encourage them to return home as soon as possible, because the damp London air would only make things worse. From the station I drove them to their room, and when I carried the suitcase in, I was hit by a wave of longing for Dori, so much so that while they were hanging up their clothes I slipped into the house itself and made my way along the route which she had confidently charted, straight to the bedroom, which was still illuminated by the pale ray of light coming through the uncurtained corner of the window. I was startled to see a large, handsome leather suitcase standing on the double bed, covering the exact spot of my failure, which now, on second thought, seemed to me not just human and forgivable but even attractive in its velvety softness, until I felt a strange desire to fail in the same way again. I hurried back to my parents, who disapproved strongly of my intrusion on the privacy of their anonymous landlords, who as far as they knew were expected back any day now. They’re already back, I almost cried, but I controlled myself. “But what were you looking for?” my mother asked, looking very perturbed. “I see that you were here while we were away too.” She had spotted the two cups I had set out for Dori and myself and immediately come to her own conclusions. I had given up trying to lie to my mother when I was a child, not only because she had infinite patience and cunning in getting at the truth, but also because I had been taught that the punishment for a lie was always worse than the punishment for the truth. I therefore avoided answering her question directly and began telling them in detail about the Lazars’ visit. I described the little medical uproar over Lazar’s EKG and told them about the evening for the Friends of the hospital, which had gone very well in spite of Lazar’s elementary English, and in the end I told them of the cute little overall for Shiva and the promise he had given me that he would try to arrange a permanent half-time job for me at the hospital as an anesthetist.