The One-Eyed Man Read online

  “Ah,” Claire said.

  “There’s a bar on the corner down the block. Open all night, for hospital staff getting off third shift.”

  “Ah!” Claire said. She looked to me.

  “You should go,” I said. “I’ll call you when I’m finished.”

  “He’s okay?” Claire asked the technician.

  “He’s fine,” she answered.

  Having decided I was almost certainly not suffering a heart attack, and having decided that despite my modest celebrity I was not terribly interesting in person, the nurse and technician departed. Claire brushed her lips against my forehead and left for the bar. Over the next few hours, as the day expired and another one began, I had the room to myself. There was no television, no reading material, no amenities at all, in fact. Just the polite beep of the heart monitor as it acknowledged my continued existence every second or so. Not one to bore easily, I didn’t mind just sitting there. And that’s what I did, all I did—sat there on the bed, neither asleep nor, eventually, in a strict neurological sense, awake. The pain in my chest continued undiminished, but that hadn’t alarmed me before, and did not alarm me now. Like most everything else in the known universe I was nothing more or less than an amalgam of carbon and hydrogen and a handful of other elements, bits of space debris, really, a state to which I would return sooner rather than later, and I experienced neither fear nor dread regarding this fact. It could happen in the next few moments—my heart, having somehow obscured its malfunction from the EKG, suddenly making a final gambit to kill me—or it could happen sixty years from now. I was indifferent to either possibility. But I wasn’t actively thinking this, there in the room with the bed and the heart monitor. I wasn’t thinking anything, in fact. If the doctors had attached an EEG machine to my temples it would have registered little more than the sluggish delta waves of a deep, dreamless sleep. Looking back and remembering those peculiar hours, a recollection both gauzy and distinct all at once, I find myself wondering if I’d somehow stumbled into nirvana. I have not had occasion to ask a Buddhist if this state would have qualified. But all the evidence points to it.

  Then the cardiologist walked in.

  “Mister … K., is it?” he asked, looking down at a tablet computer as he entered.

  The sensation was of being yanked back into my corporeal form, not unlike the way people describe the conclusion of a near-death experience.

  “It’s just ‘K.,’” I told him.

  “Sorry, my mistake. K. How are you feeling?”

  “I couldn’t describe it if I tried.”

  He glanced up at me, his expression of professional aloofness morphing into perplexity. “Still having chest pains?”

  I took brief stock of my body. “Yes,” I said.

  “And are you feeling distressed?”

  “Not in the least,” I told him.

  The cardiologist looked at me again, his puzzlement compounding.

  “I mean, I could tell you I’m distressed, if that’s what you want,” I said. “I realize it’s what both your experience as a physician and plain common sense would cause you to expect, in a person with severe chest pain.”

  The cardiologist continued to stare. After a few seconds his expression softened. “I know you from somewhere, don’t I?” he asked.

  “It’s not strictly accurate to say you know me,” I said. “We’ve never met before now.”

  “Right, right. But I’ve seen your face.” He snapped his fingers several times, trying to place me.

  “Likely on television,” I said. “I have a show.”

  “That’s it,” he said, pointing at me. “The thing with the monk!”

  “Everybody loves the thing with the monk,” I said.

  “He really gave you a licking!” the cardiologist said.

  “He certainly did,” I assured him.

  “Good stuff,” the cardiologist said, his excitement waning now as he remembered our roles in this context. “Good stuff. So you say you’re not distressed at all, but you’re still having chest pains.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Well your EKG is perfectly normal. Sort of eerily normal, actually. No variations at all, and certainly no pathological variations. You might be surprised to know how rare it is to see a truly normal EKG.”

  “Do you have any idea why it’s called an EKG and not an ECG?” I asked him.

  He was reading something on the tablet computer now, and answered without looking up. “Sure,” he said. “It was invented in Holland. They spell ‘cardio’ with a ‘k.’”

  “That makes sense,” I said.

  The cardiologist flicked at the tablet screen a few times, then brought his gaze up to mine again. “So the good news is there’s absolutely nothing wrong with your heart,” he said. “Under some circumstances I might suggest that you follow up with your regular doctor for more thorough testing, but I don’t think that’s necessary here.”

  “So we’re done?” I asked.

  “Not quite,” he said. “We still have to wait a few more hours and take another blood sample, just to be sure.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “So this new show of yours,” he said. “That must be stressful. Wondering how it’s going to do. Getting your butt kicked by Shaolin monks.”

  “I don’t experience it as stressful at all,” I said.

  The cardiologist sat down on a rolling stool and placed his tablet on the counter next to the jars of swab sticks and tongue depressors. “Reason I ask is because by far the leading cause of ER visits for chest pain is stress. It’s ten to one in terms of stress related to heart related.”

  “I read something to that effect recently.”

  “I see that your wife died not too long ago,” the cardiologist said, pointing to the tablet computer.

  “That depends on how you define ‘not too long ago,’” I said.

  “Recently enough that I suspect it might have something to do with your symptoms,” he said. “Did you experience her death as stressful?”

  “I did at the time,” I told him. “Since then, things have changed.”

  “Meaning …”

  I hesitated. “The best way for me to explain it would be to say I don’t regard death in the same way most people do.”

  “That’s pretty vague.”

  “I prefer not to get specific about it, anymore. It upsets people.”

  “I’m certain that whatever you have to say will not upset me.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Are you familiar with general relativity?”

  The cardiologist smiled. “Little known fact,” he said. “I was studying to be a physicist before I made a hard left to med school.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  He waved a hand. “Don’t worry, it’s no great tragedy,” he said. “I just took a close look at pay scales for college professors and decided a lucrative medical specialty was more appealing.”

  “So you must know of Einstein’s friend Besso.”

  “Of course,” the cardiologist said. “‘For physicists the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.’”

  “How did you know that’s what I was talking about?”

  “Seemed likely, given the subject.”

  “Well so there’s your explanation.”

  “Explanation for what?”

  “Why I no longer experience my wife’s being dead as stressful,” I told him.

  “You know,” the cardiologist said, “you’re the only other person I’ve ever met who feels that way.”

  “You believe death is illusory?”

  He nodded. “Sure. I mean, intellectually, yes. We know without question that time is relative, that everything exists concurrently. Though death isn’t illusory. It happens as surely as anything else. It’s just not conclusive, as most people believe it to be.”

  “I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting to have precisely this conversation with someone,” I said.
“Or rather, to have this conversation with someone who doesn’t think I’m out of my mind.”

  “None of which,” the cardiologist said, holding up one finger, “is to say I don’t grieve. My mother passed away last year, and I cried like a baby. I’m disappointed and saddened, often, when one of my patients dies.”

  “As is your privilege,” I told him. “Probably a good thing, given your line of work.”

  He chuckled. “You would think. But it’s actually a professional liability. Feelings. They get in the way of clinical judgment. But now listen. Pleased as I am to meet a fellow traveler, there’s just one small problem.”

  “What’s that?” I asked.

  “You’re bullshitting yourself,” he said, leveling a steady yet not unkind gaze at me.

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “You’re not as convinced of your wife’s eternal existence as you believe you are,” he said. He pointed at his chest. “Not here, where it really counts. You’re still grieving, whether you realize it or not. That’s why you’re in my ER. Grief quite literally makes the heart hurt. This is a medical fact.”

  “You’re not the first person,” I said, “to tell me that.”

  “That grief can make the heart hurt?”

  “No. That I’m deluding myself.”

  “Well whoever the others are, they’re right.”

  I thought for a moment. “Some might contend that, given what we know of space-time, my wife will get sick and die again, and again, and again. They could argue that this is nothing to be encouraged by. And they would be right.”

  “Certainly,” the cardiologist said.

  “If I’m being honest,” I said, “that does pain me, on occasion. That particular realization.”

  “It’s difficult, knowing the truth,” the cardiologist said.

  “On the other hand, she and I will meet for the first time again, and again, and again. We will spend that weekend in bed while her parents are away in Cape Cod again, and again, and again. The morning after the party at Chris McCauslin’s, when I woke up and found her sleeping at my side? Her body still an almost complete mystery? The room situated, maybe even originally designed, so that you could see the blue ice on the lake without lifting your head from the pillow? The trees draped in fresh snow, and the sense that my whole life had been decided the night before in a way I felt perfectly fine with? That will all happen again and again, too.”

  “It will,” the cardiologist said.

  “So maybe everything’s okay, on balance,” I said.

  “Maybe,” the cardiologist said. “Still, you’re not as okay as you think.”

  I took a minute to absorb this. “I am willing,” I told him, “to accept the possibility that you’re correct. But that doesn’t change my experience of myself.”

  “Well I guess that’s good enough for today,” the cardiologist said, smiling. He stood and retrieved his tablet from the countertop. “So anyway, a couple more hours on those blood enzymes, and we should be able to get you out of here. My shift’s over before then, so this’ll be it for us.”

  “Would you like to have a drink after?” I asked him. “There’s a bar down the street. You probably know about it.”

  He paused, looked at me, considered.

  “There is nothing sexual or otherwise romantic in this proposition,” I assured him.

  The cardiologist shook his head. “That’s not it. As a physician, it would be irresponsible for me to recommend a patient go have a drink immediately after discharge. Borderline malpractice, really.”

  He was smiling.

  “Of course,” I said, “your decision about whether or not to join me has already occurred.”

  “That is true,” he said. “Just because we don’t yet know what that decision will be doesn’t mean it hasn’t been made.”

  “It was made the moment time itself came into existence.”

  “It’s out of my hands,” he agreed.

  “Neither of us has any choice,” I said. “Flies stuck in the amber of eternity.”

  “This decision,” he said, “about whether I’m interested in a glass of single malt and a conversation regarding the nature of time is older than the pyramids.”

  “Older than the dinosaurs,” I said.

  “Older than the Milky Way,” he said.

  “But also not,” I told him.

  “That’s true,” he said. “Also not.”

  “It’s all pretty complex,” I said.

  “Which complexity may require more than one glass of scotch,” he said.

  “There’s a woman waiting for me at the bar,” I said. “She’s very pretty, very smart, and likely, by now, very drunk. Midtwenties. Eyes, blue. Hair, deep red. Despite her inebriation, she should make for good company until I arrive.”

  “My wife,” the cardiologist said, “probably wouldn’t dig it too much, me having a drink at three in the morning with a drunk redhead.”

  “Your wife’s displeasure,” I said, “is yet another inevitability forged at the beginning of time.”

  The cardiologist smiled again. “How’s the chest?” he asked.

  I paused for a second. “You know,” I said, “it feels perfectly fine.”

  “Well there you go,” he said. “I’ll see you at the bar.”

  “Yes, you will,” I told him. “Over and over again.”

  15

  THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WANTING AND WANTING

  Even with an unambiguously terminal diagnosis there were still moments of hope, cruel interludes when images of Sarah’s insides, murky and meaningless to the layman’s eye, indicated to the experts that the masses in her chest and femur were shrinking. Lesions reduced to the size of chickpeas, and looking every bit as benign. The doctors did their best to toss cold water on our hope, reminded us that while these developments were better than the alternative, they did not mean Sarah’s long-term prognosis had changed at all. Despite their warnings, though, we were granted what felt like a two-month stay of execution, gratitude like a cramp in my heart, an optimism so sudden and buoyant it forever changed the definition of the word for me.

  It was toward the end of this time that Sarah asked if I wanted a divorce.

  “Do you?” I said, after staring at her in silence for several moments.

  “‘Want’ isn’t exactly the word to describe what I’m feeling,” she said.

  “Well it’s your word, so.”

  “Come on, K. Don’t be a jerk.”

  I took a breath. “Okay,” I said. “Talk to me.”

  It was fall, the birches and elms at the height of their luminous multihued announcement of winter’s approach, and because Sarah felt better than she had in a long while we’d decided to have brunch at a place up the block, across the street from the coffee shop where months later I would be shot in the trapezius. The restaurant had been a staple of our precancer marriage: close by, reliably good food, friendly servers. We’d eaten there so often the guys in the kitchen knew our names. Then Sarah took sick, and we hadn’t been in since. But here we were again, against all odds, sitting on the sidewalk patio under a strong autumn sun, eating cornflake-crusted French toast and sipping coffee, and in the midst of all this splendor Sarah apparently, inexplicably, wanted a divorce.

  “I don’t want a divorce,” she reiterated, pushing a sausage link around with her fork, eyes trained on the plate. “I just think it’s a possibility we should talk about. Now that we’ve got this little window where we’re not totally under duress.”

  “Usually when someone brings up divorce, that means they want a divorce.”

  “Fine. Have it your way,” she said.

  “I don’t necessarily think we should be discussing this on the first day we’ve been in public for months.”

  “We’ve been in public plenty, K.,” Sarah said.

  “If you call the oncology ward public,” I said.

  Sarah put the fork down and sat back with her arms folded across her chest. “Do yo
u resent me for that?” she asked. There was no heat in her words, just naked inquiry. “For all the time we’ve spent in the hospital? For being so sick?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Because it’s alright if you do, K.,” she said. “That would make perfect sense.”

  If in this conversation I had been the later version of myself, the one so dedicated to facts that he said what was true even when it almost certainly would result in him being reviled, assaulted, shouted at, spit on, I would have told Sarah that she was, of course, entirely correct: though I knew it was breathtakingly wrong, though I hated myself for it, I resented her. Instead of admitting this, though, I skewered a piece of French toast and shoved it into my mouth so I could chew rather than speak.

  “That’s what I thought,” Sarah said, watching me.

  It was quiet between us for a while, save for the sullen squeak of cutlery against porcelain, and the slow approach and fade of cars passing on the street.

  Finally I looked up from my plate and said, “Sarah, I love you.”

  I imagined, foolishly, that this would be some sort of transformative moment in the conversation.

  “Well I love you, K.,” Sarah said. “Jesus. Of course I love you, too. But what does that have to do with anything?”

  I paused, incredulous. Then: “I don’t know. Everything?”

  She gave me a gently scolding look. “Let’s be honest,” she said. “We were heading for a divorce before. And it’s not as though we’ve somehow evolved in all this. Just the opposite. We—as in we, the couple, the pairing, the agreement to a shared life—have been frozen. On hold, while we deal with more pressing things. Nothing has changed, K., since the day before I was diagnosed. Think about it.”

  I sat there stubbornly refusing to think about it.

  “So if we were heading for a divorce before,” Sarah continued, “why shouldn’t we get divorced now? Because I’m sick and you don’t want to abandon me? Because I may be getting better and we’ll have another chance?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Both of those things. Either of them. Whichever way it ends up.”