Julie is not restrained anymore. I can see her mentally chewing through the implied straps, though. She weaves her teeth together. She clamps down. She clads herself with that same involuntary grin. This time it alleges violation. Priests come by to offer simple blessings. Children parade through with balloon strings tucked in palms.
She seems improved. She is no longer the same eerie confluence of reactions she appeared to be on the roof. I ask her if she feels ready to go home. I ask her if she feels drained of that spirit. “Nothing’s worth a burst of emptiness,” she replies.
I wander the main thoroughfares of the hospital. I think of the back passages we were allowed through when we arrived. I think of the hidden hallways used to transport patients behind the scenes. I watch orderlies pull supplies from closets and cabinets. I stride through the idea of a place that never empties itself of people. Before a nurse can leave, he or she must be replaced by another. Air huffs through the heating ducts. Blood tunnels through my veins. It all calls our home to mind.
I go to the chapel to formally concern myself for a while. I drop my shoulders. I knit my hands loosely in my lap. I feel like a fugitive. The right thing to do is to stay with her in that room. Maybe, though, her recovery relies on me letting her be. Everyone keeps telling me to take care of myself. They inquire about my cough. They tell me to rest. I keep wondering when Julie will feel that her whole mind has returned. I wonder if she ever felt it was gone.
82
THE DETECTIVES COME to the hospital, lending credence to the idea that even grave bouts of ill health can’t save me from a bit of trouble. While James is off drifting through the halls and channeling the petitions of the other patients and visitors, I hear O’Neill and Poremski asking the nurse if it’s all right to ask a few questions, and the nurse wishes them luck getting any sense out of me, and I snort, and the detectives appear, their eyes landing on me and taking off, trying to navigate their impressions of my reliability.
“Mrs. Khoury. How are you feeling?”
I chuff again.
“We hear you’ve had a rough go of it. Is your husband here? We’d like to talk to him, too.”
I signal.
“Okay, if we give you some information, can you share it with him?”
I nod as if it were the most obvious answer in the world, but behind the gesture, I feel a skip of worry that the forgetfulness will swallow what they tell me.
“Mrs. Khoury, we had both the drawings in Ms. Abbatacola’s home and the drawings at your house analyzed. Now, they match, but we also had them compared to the handwriting of you and your husband, and Connie, too, and there’s no match there.”
I hum. “So you believe us now that you have some harebrained version of proof? I’ll go ahead and walk further out on this limb and say, it doesn’t inspire much confidence when someone tells you they trust you because they’ve gone to great measure to prove they can. I’m not terribly accustomed to being doubted.”
“We certainly don’t mean to insult you, Mrs. Khoury. We haven’t ruled anything out. We’re trying to determine which avenues are worthy of our pursuit.”
“Even better. Tell me, have you found our neighbor?”
“We have not.”
“I could say I knew that would be the case but then you’d ask me how it was I knew.”
“And by that you mean?”
“You, sir, are the detective. How long do we wait for Rolf to return? What happens with his property? His belongings?”
“Don’t worry yourself about that. We’ll look for him until he’s found.”
I start to smile, seeing through their platitudes, knowing a grin will be read wrong, but I can’t call up the will to squelch it.
The detective eyes my wrong face. “Mrs. Khoury, I will remind you that any additional information you can give to us will be of the utmost help. We will uncover all of the relevant details, but you can help the timeline on which we do so by being forthcoming. That said, I understand you are currently in a fragile state, and I wish you a quick and uncomplicated recovery. Please let your husband know we visited and to contact us if he’d like to discuss the present situation.”
“I’ll do just that.” I intend nothing, ring for the nurse.
83
“THE DETECTIVES came by,” Julie tells me. I want to know more. She stays quiet.
The doctor visits. He says words. My hearing drops out over and over. I lose myself to the making of sense. “Temporal lobe epilepsy … Lying dormant for months, possibly years … During an attack … Jamais vu … ‘Never seen’ instead of ‘already seen’ … As if everything is strange, even home and family … Voices, music, people, smells, tastes called auras or warnings … Fright. Intellectual fascination. Artistic impulses. Delusions of grandeur and heightened religiosity. Even pleasure … You may think you’re speaking, but you’re not. You may think you’re silent, but you’re babbling … The temporal lobes—on each side of the brain at about the level of the ears where the seizure is focused … Some follow head injury or infection … Repetitive, automatic movements, like lip smacking and rubbing hands together … Spread to other portions of the brain … A convulsive, or grand mal, seizure … Completely or at least mostly controlled with medication … Candidate for surgery.”
I can feel Julie’s resistance without looking at her. Her refusal petrifies. I am grateful to have an answer that can explain her behavior. Her face, though, is pitted, stained with the shame of this defect.
“It’s certainly not easy to hear, but better to have an answer, right, Jules?”
She stays still. More doctors come into the room, young and curious. They bustle to introduce themselves. I take each of their hands. I try to commit their names to memory. I stare at the stitched cursive on their white jackets. Julie refuses to accept their introductions. The doctors flounder and regain their bearings.
“I have a question, Doctors,” she says. “Can you tell me where my bruises come from?… No, you can’t, because everything is more complicated than you’re making it out to be. If giving it a single name is some sort of comfort, well, lucky you, but I know there must be more. Go on, explain it all to me, since you have such a handle on the situation. Where does the mildew in our house come from? That’s the result of my brain shaking itself apart? And the passages that open up in our home? Go ahead. You reason it all out. I’m listening. Sure, I’ll sign off on a surgery. I’ll corrupt some document with my name so you can cauterize the tiny coils of my brain, if you can solve the mystery of more than just me jumping off a roof.”
The doctor listens. He looks at me. I can tell that he’s certain this is all in her head.
I want to believe it is, too. “Julie, maybe you should rest. This is a lot to take in. We can make a decision tomorrow.” I believe that treating her could be a start for us, a place to begin to heal and reorient ourselves, to zero in on why all of this began happening in the first place.
My tongue huddles silent in my mouth. The doctors say, “We’ll check in with you tomorrow then. Good night.” The light swings out of the room when they shut the door behind them. Julie and I fumble for ourselves alone in the dark.