The subway stopped and the doors opened. People bounced around the platform like electrons. A large black woman sat on a bench, a baby carriage next to her. Except there wasn’t a baby in the carriage, there were newspapers.
My father snapped his fingers. ‘Stratum spinosum!’ he cried, loud enough so that everyone else in the subway car looked up. ‘I just remembered! Stratum spinosum!’
As if he’d just split the atom.
A couple sat in the waiting room. I only saw the man briefly before the nurse took him back, but I could tell he was youngish, perhaps in his thirties. The woman stayed behind, sitting in the chair, knitting.
She noticed me and smiled. ‘Hi.’
The receptionist picked up her phone and dialed.
‘Hot outside, isn’t it?’ the girl pressed.
‘Uh huh,’ I muttered.
‘The air conditioning in the subway car I was in was broken, too,’ she added.
‘It’s nice and cool in here though, isn’t it?’ the receptionist chirped, hanging up the phone, not having said anything into it.
‘Sure is.’ The girl’s needles were metal, and they clicked together when they touched. The conversation was so small and mundane it made me itchy. It was as if we were waiting for a bus. As if near-death experiences weren’t happening just a few feet away.
The door opened. Dr Frum stood in the hallway, staring at me. He moved forward without picking up his knees, and then his hand was on my arm.
‘Your father is still in the recovery room,’ he said quietly. ‘He had a bit of a bad reaction this time. So it’ll be a little longer before you can see him. He’s resting.’
I shot up. ‘Bad reaction…how?’
‘Some patients are fearful when they wake up.’ He smiled at me kindly but absently.
It broke my heart to hear he was fearful. I imagined him curled up in the fetal position, thinking the jar of cotton swabs is a monster. It’s because of our argument on the train, I thought. He had entertained the idea of talking to my mother again, and I’d fought him on it. It’s because of something I’ve done. The doctor slipped back into the hall, and I clutched the arms of the chair and lowered myself back down.
The silence settled back into the waiting room, like a parachute that had been momentarily airborne but was drifting back down to earth. When I looked up, the knitting girl’s eyes were on me, a simpering, pitying smile on her face.
‘What are you making?’ the receptionist called to her.
‘A sweater,’ she answered sweetly.
‘In this heat?’
‘I know. But the speed I’m going, I’ll be done by December.’
They both laughed.
I couldn’t be in the room anymore. I stood up and staggered to the door, my arms outstretched like a mummy. I walked to the end of the hall for the stairwell and descended one flight. Doctors whirled by. Some of the doors to the patients’ rooms were open; I looked in and saw a woman lying in a bed, picking at her lunch. There was a man sitting on an orange plastic chair next to her, quietly talking. In another room, there was a whole group of people laughing, inspecting someone whose leg was in traction. ‘I can’t go back to work for six fucking weeks,’ the patient whined. ‘Don’t worry,’ his mother/sister/girlfriend/some anonymous family member said. ‘We’ll take care of you.’
Ahead of me was a closet marked Janitor. I fumbled for the doorknob and wrapped my hands around the cool metal. It opened, amazingly. Inside were a bucket, a few brooms, and some cleaning products. I stepped in and bent down, curling my knees into my chest. Then I closed the door. It was so dark in here. Quiet.
He was fearful. I put my head down on my knees.
Suddenly, the door whipped open. A man was standing there, staring irksomely at the broom and the mop. I screamed. He looked down, at first not having noticed me, and jumped.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘I thought this was the bathroom. What are you…?’
He squatted down. He was dressed in brown pants, work boots, and a brown work shirt. It wasn’t until he got very close that I realized it was the loudest basketball player from the court across the street, the one with the greasy blond hair and mustache. The one I was sure harassed women just for the hell of it.
A small smile appeared on his face. ‘Are you stuck?’
‘No,’ I said quickly.
‘Then what are you doing?’
I couldn’t answer. His smile grew larger, more sinister. It occurred to me that he was a dangerous man, capable of violent things. During my father’s last appointment, I’d watched him and another basketball player get into a shouting match. It had quickly escalated into grappling on the pavement. I watched this man clench his jaw, the cords of the muscles ropy and straining. He hit the other man again and again and again. People just walked by. It both thrilled and disgusted me that rage could be so plain and obvious, in the middle of public, genteel York Avenue.
Now, here he was. He stood back. ‘You want to come out?’