The Lifeguard (11 page)

I approach the double doors and look through the glass windows. There are half a dozen beds, one next to the other in a semi-circle. I glance around the room. Some of the beds are hidden behind white cotton curtains. An old woman is getting a blood transfusion. I get a sick feeling as I stare at the plastic bag of maroon-colored liquid hanging next to her bed, a pillow of blood dangling from a steel IV pole. A rubber tube coated red runs into her arm. Other patients are sleeping, or unconscious. How can they tell?

I walk up to one of the nurses. She’s writing in a patient’s chart, the equivalent of the medical bibliography. She looks up at me finally. Why are you here? her eyes say.

“I’m looking for a little boy, he’s about seven.” I pause to catch my breath. “Cody. His name is Cody O’Malley. He was here yesterday.”

She shakes her head. We don’t have children in here. Did you try the Pediatric ICU?”

“I…I didn’t know there was a separate one.”

She points outside. “First room on the left.”

I feel stupid for not knowing. I walk down the corridor and see the sign above the door. The Pediatric ICU is smaller, only four beds. There are children in two of them. The other two are empty. I ask the nurse at the desk about Cody.

“I just started my shift,” she says. “Let me check.” She goes to her computer and types away, switching screens. It’s a small hospital; why is it so complicated?

She looks up at me finally. “Transferred this morning.”

“So he’s better?”

“I guess.”

I rush out the door and go back into the elevator, leaning back against the wall out of breath, almost faint. I lean over so blood runs to my head and I don’t pass out. As the doors start to open I quickly stand up straight, taking deep breaths, trying to act normal. At the nurses’ station I see a face I don’t recognize.

“Cody O’Malley?”

“301.”

I hear voices in the distance as I walk down the corridor.

301. The door is open.

His parents sit on either side of his bed. For the first time they look up and make eye contact with me. His mother has color in her face. And the first thing I think? She’s returned from the dead. My little rag dog has come back too. I see him truly alive for the first time, smiling and responsive.

“You’re better,” I blurt out.

“They gave me ice cream,” he says, as though that’s what made the difference. “And they said they’d bring more if I finished all they gave me.”

“You’re so lucky!”

“He is,” his dad says, dropping his head. “We never expected…” His voice cracks and he turns abruptly staring hard out the window.

“We were all rooting for you,” I say. It comes out too loud and euphoric, but no one seems to notice.

“They said I could go home soon,” Cody says.

“We’re supposed to go to Manhattan for a week’s vacation,” his mother says. “If he continues to get better, they’ll discharge him and consider letting us go.” She shakes her head. “He talks nonstop about climbing to the top of the Statue of Liberty.”

“That’s wonderful,” I say, staring down at the flowers that I forgot I was holding. I reach out awkwardly and give them to her and she touches my hand lightly.

“I’ll come back tomorrow with some games,” I whisper to Cody, as I turn quickly to go.

I stop at the nurses’ station outside and see Jane. “I can’t believe it,” I whisper. “He made a complete turnaround.”

“We were all surprised,”she says.

I think of what Antonio said.

“Children have energy, strong spirits, great resources. Nature wants them to survive. By instinct, they fight. And there is…healing.”

I’m tempted to run to the beach to tell him.

Only I think he already knows.

Even though I’m not officially on duty, I read to some of the other kids, then go the pharmacy for an older woman who forgot to bring toothpaste and doesn’t like the hospital brand. As I’m leaving at the end of the day, an ambulance pulls up.

“Car accident,” a nurse tells the desk.

I rush to leave before they come in. I unlock my bike and pedal fast, taking the path along the beach.

V
isits with Antonio are part of my routine now. I stop to see him almost every day on the way home from the hospital. I’ve heard people talk about mentors, even though I’ve never really understood before what people like that are like. But now that I’ve met Antonio, I know.

His serenity and openness invite me to speak to him and sometimes I surprise myself and tell him more than I thought I would. The hospital, my home, my parents—even their divorce. He listens, but he never tells me what to do. Only sometimes he raises a hand to stop me. I wait for him to speak, but even then, it’s just a few sentences, but with weight and spirit. He’s almost…Godlike, and I’m in awe of him. I tell him about Cody and think about asking him whether he knew, but I look at him and his eyes answer.

Antonio knows all about me, but I don’t know much about him, so I ask him about growing up in Brazil. I’ve never met anyone from there before. All I learned in school about the Amazon is that it’s the world’s largest river and that no bridges cross it.

He has a far away look in his eyes when he answers, as though his mind has traveled back home and he’s telling the story from there, seeing it all again as if he’s a child again.

“I was born in Manaus,” he says. “My father was a shaman.”

“A what?”

“A shaman is a healer of the rainforest who walks between the visible and the invisible worlds. Plants and spirits were his medicines.” He shakes his head, as if in wonder. “He could look into other people’s dreams,” he says. “And he would have great dreams of his own, of vision and power.”

“How did he learn everything?”

“He was an apprentice to another shaman. One passes the information to another. There are no schools for that.”

“So when you were growing up and you got sick he’d find you the right plant and then pray?”

“Something like that,” he says, holding a hand out in the air. “The rainforest is filled with life,” he says, making a big arc with his hand. “There are a million different types of plants—almost three quarters of the animals and plants in the world. Everywhere you go, Sirena, there’s wildlife and the music of nature and color, intense, brilliant color.” He smiles. “They say there are four thousand different kinds of butterflies, Sirena. Can you imagine?”

Many Western medicines come from the rainforest, he says, but only one percent of all the plants have been studied for their use as medicines. “Some say the rainforest has a medicine for every disease.”

“I want to go, I want to see it all.”

“Ah, but there are more than plants and butterflies.” He shakes a finger in warning. “Do you like mosquitos? There are clouds of them.”

I shake my head. “I hate them, no.”

“What about spiders, poison frogs, jaguars, tarantulas as big as my hand, and snakes—many, many snakes?”

I shake my head again.

“You know the anaconda?” His arm becomes an undulating snake.

“Only from a horror movie.”

Antonio laughs. “Some say they have seen anacondas as long as sixty feet—a six-story building. Can you imagine?”

“Are you scared of them?”

“Only a fool wouldn’t be.”

Even though he never worked as a doctor, he studied with his father, he says, and learned how to heal himself with plants. “But cures come from spirits too. They enter your heart and soul. You have to give yourself over to the healing journey.”

“But in this country, what do you do when you get sick?”

Antonio shakes his head. “I don’t get sick,” he says. “I’ve never been to the doctor.”

“But if you did?”

“I’d boil the bush.”

“What?”

“I’d take the plants I need.”

“So you’ve never taken antibiotics for ear infections, or aspirin for headaches?”

“I don’t get headaches, Sirena, but if I did, I would chew the leaves of feverfew.”

“What’s that?”

“Nature’s aspirin—a plant that helps the pain. But to truly heal, you have to have a spiritual relationship with the plant. You have to want it to work. People in this country…they don’t understand that. Medicine here can be cold, one sided. It treats the symptoms, not the disease. Here they don’t understand that the mind and body are one.”

He tells me about saving the Amazon jungle and the rainforest. “It’s called the earth’s lungs,” he says, because it makes one-fifth of the world’s oxygen.

But people rob the jungle, taking out the timber, he says. “Half the animals and plants in the world will be destroyed over the next few decades.” Antonio puts down his paint brush. “People too,” he says. “There used to be ten million Indians in the jungle. Do you know how many are left?”

I shake my head.

“One hundred, two hundred thousand, maybe.”

“What happened to them all?”

“They were wiped out by Europeans who came to exploit the jungle and make money.”

“Why can’t anyone stop them?”

“The selfish move faster than the selfless,” he says.

“Can’t the government help?”

“They’re part of the problem, Sirena.”

When I finally remember that Aunt Ellie’s waiting for me for dinner, the sky has turned velvet blue. I get to my feet. “I was so lost in what you told me that I’m late.”

“Then you must go, you don’t want to miss dinner.”

As I start to pedal away, Antonio calls out to me. “Be careful, Sirena.”

“Of what?” I get ready to shout back, but I stop. I’m too far away, and Antonio’s a little hard of hearing.

S
o you like working at the hospital?” Mark says.

“It’s fun to be with the kids,” I say, surprising myself.

“You look happier.” He glances at Aunt Ellie, who pretends not to notice.

While Mark is cooking, I look at the clock. “What time is dinner?”

“An hour or so.”

“Can I go for a swim?”

“As long as the lifeguard is still on,” Aunt Ellie says.

He’s not in his chair when I get there, but he’s probably just somewhere else on the beach because he’s still supposed to be on duty. I swim out past where the waves break. My arms are stronger now and I can go farther without getting winded. The sun is lower and the water feels cooler. I swim out past where the waves break, lying back and watching the light in the late afternoon sky. When I’m finally ready to turn and go back, I hear something in the water.

For no reason, I swim out farther and farther. I’m afraid to turn around, only I’m not sure why. My breathing gets faster, my head pounds. What is it? What could it be?

The sound gets closer and closer and then smack, my hand slams something hard. I look up, startled.

I turn and then I see what’s come up next to me.

A fast-moving surfboard.

He’s stretched out, naked from the waist up. He glides up alongside me, like a submarine that has silently risen to the surface.

I keep going.

“Time to get out,” he says, finally.

“What?”

He turns the board abruptly, cutting in front of me. “Look how far out you are. You can’t make it back on your own.”

“How do
you
know?” Irritation creeps into my voice. I’m short of breath, but I work to hide it.