The Damned (10 page)

Back then, I didn't have anybody other than my dad, who was half gone anyway.

But this time it was different.

W
ILLA AND
E
DDIE BARELY LEFT
my side as I blacked in and blacked out over the—what? Days? Weeks? Time is unreadably stretched out on the serious postsurgical wards. It's hard to say
what's a day or what's a night when the course of things is measured in dressing changes and morphine hits. But though I told them to go home, that I'd be okay, the truth was it was good to see them for the lengthening stretches I was awake. Eddie especially. Eddie, whose voice was with me in the After, telling me to run.

I took to sitting up in bed and reading to him.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
A gift from me only two days before the picnic. He told me he's seen the movie but liked the book better.

It was a pleasure to watch him enjoy the story. But when I glanced up from the page I searched his face for something other than his interest in Narnia. I wanted to see if he recognized he was there with me in the After that Ash tried to drag me to. Part of him, reaching across.

Did he really see the girl holding the soccer ball, squeezing the life out of it, out of me? Did he know? Or did I imagine it just as I imagined his presence in the field behind the house on Alfred Street, a link between worlds of my own making?

I wasn't sure.

But sometimes I thought I saw a hint of knowledge in Eddie's eyes, a slightly baffled recognition. Something had changed for him since what his mother called my “heart trouble,” something more than a good kid trying to be nice to a guy who doesn't have much time left. If I had to guess I'd say he didn't understand it, even if he was there.

And if he
was
there, he needed to be protected. Not from the glimpse he might have had of the afterlife, but from her.

O
NCE I FELT UP TO
it, in a moment when there was just the two of us in the room, I asked Willa what happened on Cambridge Common.

She didn't see much. One second I was kicking the ball around with Eddie and the next I'm on the ground. She called 911 and they were there almost instantly. Not that it made any difference. The way the one paramedic straddled me on the gurney, “trying to do a handstand” on my chest as a pair of firemen wheeled me to the ambulance, the radio calls to Mount Auburn Hospital with their Code-this and
Emergency Cardio–that—none of it looked good. In fact, soon after my arrival, a trauma doctor scuffed into the waiting room to tell Willa she was sorry, they tried everything, but Mr. Orchard was gone.

“Eddie took it hard. Took it
weird,
” Willa said. “Kind of spaced out, right? Staring out the window at the parking lot like he's expecting someone he knows to show up. Not saying a word. So I left him where he was.”

With me,
I almost said.

Maybe fifteen minutes passed. Willa, in a daze herself—we were having a picnic less than an hour ago! a Sunday in the park!—and beginning to think about what she might have to do next, what forms would need signing or statements she'd be expected to provide, didn't understand at first what the trauma doctor meant when she came back to say there'd been “some unexpectedly positive developments.” It turns out that while she'd been out here telling Willa that her “husband” was dead, a cardiac team had taken over and opened the patient up. Put a stent into a severely blocked valve. Paddled the heart from inside the chest cavity.

“He's back now,” Eddie said before the doctor could.

“Yes,” she said, with something like regret, as though admitting the loss of a bet. “That would appear to be the case.”

W
HEN
I
WAS ABLE TO
talk to the cardiac surgeon myself a couple days later he couldn't help congratulating the both of us.

“Well, we did it, Danny,” he said, shaking my hand. “We goddamned
did
it.”

I liked him not only for saving my life but for being a doctor of the kind they don't seem to make many of anymore, the ones who've seen pretty much everything, but who are still frequently amazed by how things can turn out.

“The human heart. An incredible machine, no doubt about it,” he said, shaking his head. “But the human mind? That's what makes outcomes like yours happen. Your heart? It was finished. It was a crushed soda can in there. But here you are.”

“Here I am,” I said, which, for the first time, opened the gates to grateful tears. The surgeon's seen those before, too. He shook his head again.

“It's pretty unusual. Your turnaround. I'd say it's a Top Ten for me. Just glad I decided to go in there and see what I could do.”

“Thank you, Doctor.”

“Hey, you did the really hard work, Danny,” he said. “Dead for—what?—eight, nine minutes. You want to see your chart? ‘THE END.' But then we get a heartbeat. I've seen sleepers in the morgue with better prospects than you and then—
ba-bump, ba-bump
! I'm telling you, something must have scared you silly over there. Because you sure came running back awful fast.”

Not that it was all good news. The surgeon told me I have a Class IV heart defect. They don't go to Class V.

“It's kind of a mess, I'm sorry to say,” he said, and I was surprised once again by how his bluntness was a consolation.

“What's the problem? In a nutshell?”

“I'm a medical specialist. We don't really do nutshells, but I'll try. The left side of your heart has compromised aortic flow—the left side affecting your body and brain, as opposed to the right that affects your respiratory, so there's that to be thankful for. Low cardiac output with high systemic vascular resistance resulting in severe systolic dysfunction. You want me to unpack any of that gobbledygook?”

“Maybe later. Can you can fix it?”

“You're on all sorts of meds already. And once you get out of here, you'll be taking more pills than Judy Garland.”

“What about surgery?”

“Been there, done that. Opened things up a bit on a blocked valve when you came in. Like blowing a spitball out of a straw. But there's nothing more we can do. In a case like yours, there's other spitballs floating around, and the straws around your heart are narrow. So, as far as conventional approaches go, no, there's not much we can do. Wait,
not
true. There's one more thing.”

“What?”

“A transplant.”

“Okay. So how—?”

“You're already on the list.”

“That's good. Right?”

“It's not a short list.”

“Oh.”

“But if an appropriate donor appears, sure. If the procedure goes well. If your body accepts the new heart.”

“That's a lot of ifs.”

“It's an iffy business.”

“So I guess I've got to say my line now. What're my chances, Doc?”

“If it were me? I'd put my affairs in order,” he said. “Say my ‘I love you's. Because transplants are damn hard to come by. And if this happens again? You're a lucky man to be here right now, Mr. Orchard. But you're not coming back next time.”

A
SIDE FROM THE PAIN THAT
came from what felt like having had a grenade go off in my chest, I felt pretty good. I didn't have what I'm told a good many other cardiac patients suffer from after an “event” like mine: the vertigo, the struggle for breath, the paralyzing exhaustion. Soon I was even going for little walks, the humiliating post-op parade of those pushing their IV poles down the hall, goose-pimpled legs on display. They would only let me out if I showed them I could shuffle around on my own, reliably make the journey between mattress and bathroom and back again. That was the ticket to freedom: to convince the nurses I was ready to live bedpan-free.

So I worked at being the best patient I could be. Because I had a reason to want out of there. Two reasons. Willa and Eddie being the difference between just wanting
out,
and wanting to
go home.

But there was a question I needed to have answered first.

“I'm going to say this once,” I said to Willa one of the afternoons when she was on her own in my room. “I have to say it, and you have to really hear it. And when you answer—whenever you decide you can
answer—I want it to be honest. Even if it hurts. Even if it feels like the worst thing you've ever said to another person, okay?”

“Jesus, Danny. That's one hell of a windup. Why don't we talk about whatever you want to talk about when—?”

“It can't be later. I've got to say it now.”

She sat in one of the two uncomfortable chairs they had for visitors in my room. It gave a little shriek at the acceptance of her weight.

“I'm all ears,” she said. Stuck her fingers behind her ears and flipped them out. It made her look a lot like her son.

“You don't have to do this. Once I get out of here. The whole
recovery
thing. The whole
waiting it out until the end
. You and Eddie have changed my life in a very short time and I can't tell you how grateful I am. But it has been just that—a short time. So short there would be no blame—no blame from me, I promise you—if you decided it would be best to go back to Marcellus or wherever and not have to deal with me. Because we have to face it—I'm just a problem now.”

“Danny. Listen—”

“What I'm saying is you're free. Any promise you've made—any suggestion of commitment—it's clear. We're good.”

Willa pursed her lips. Raised her eyebrows. Made an are-you-finished? face.

“Are you finished?” she said.

“I think so.”

“Okay. I understand what you're saying. But what you don't understand is me.”

Willa got up from her chair. Lay on her side next to me on the bed so that she could whisper what she said next into my ear.

“I don't run from things, Danny. And I don't say things because they sound good at the time. I say them because I believe them.”

“I love you.”

“Like that, for example.”

“No. I really love you.”

“Ditto. So that's all you need to know from me on this offer of
yours. You had to say it, you've got your answer. And you can never open that door again—not unless you're the one who walks out of it. Got it?”

She kissed me. And though I must have smelled considerably less than sexy, though I couldn't get my lips to work right, it was a real kiss, not just a gentle deal-sealer. And when it was over and she started to roll away I pulled her back for another.

O
THER THAN
L
YLE
K
IRK, PRESIDENT
of the Boston Afterlifers, who came by with a six-pack of Rolling Rock (“Not sure they let you have this in here, but you only go round once—or twice, or maybe three times—right?”), my only visitors were Willa and Eddie. If it wasn't for them, I would've been alone in there with the nurses and doctors who came and went, taking blood and asking how I was doing in a way that made it clear the answer wouldn't make a difference one way or another.

The cardiac surgeon was the only other visitor I actually looked forward to seeing. I got the sense that he didn't have to check on me as often as he did. He seemed to take a special interest in those near the edge, like me. Life and death. The inarguable line in the sand. It's probably what brought him to the job in the first place.

“Danny Orchard,” he announced as he came into my room once. “Why didn't you tell me you're famous?”

“I'm not. Not really. D-list at best.”

“Modesty! Some of the nurses have told me you've been on TV, and they take TV very seriously. They've even brought your book to work but they're too shy to ask you to sign them. So I volunteered on their behalf.”

He produced three copies of
The After
from his satchel. Placed them on the bed beside me and slapped a ballpoint pen on top.

“Would you mind?” he said.

I asked for the nurses' names and set to inscribing the title pages. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the doctor watching me with an amused stare. It's an expression I'd grown used to over the years.
The curiosity that came with being next to someone who may have a handle on Life's Big Mystery.

When I finished he continued standing there, nodding down at the books I'd returned to him.

“I'm a man of science. Never seen a spirit in my life, holy or otherwise,” he said. “But I went to Catholic school growing up. I'm no stranger to what I'm
supposed
to believe happens to us after we go. And in my line of work, I'm often the last one to see them before they do. But I've got to say you're a first time for me. You've come back
twice.
”

“Three times now, actually.”

“See! I'd think you were a nutcase if I saw you on TV saying that.”

“I probably would, too.”

“What I mean is that I know you, and take you as more or less sane. Which makes me want to ask: On this most recent occasion, do you have any memory of what you saw over there?”

“Yes.”

“And how was it? Heaven, I mean. Have they done any renovations to the place since you were there last?”

That's not where I went this time. This time it was someone trying to pull me the other way.

“It looks a lot like Detroit,” I said.

O
NE AFTERNOON, AFTER WAKING FROM
a narcotic snooze, I opened my eyes to find someone in my room. One of the candy striper volunteers I'd noticed walking the halls, pushing carts stacked with newspapers and magazines and stuffed animals. Did they make them hang out there as a condition of some suspended sentence, counting the hours they had to put in handing out three-month-old
People
s and
Time
s instead of a stretch in juvie detention? Or were they just good kids trying to help?