“You’re a good mother, Sarah,” he said, again touching her hand. “You and Marcus were such good parents. You have this beautiful child.…” He didn’t continue, embarrassed that he’d immediately transformed a thought about her to one about himself, and all he hadn’t made.
James stopped talking and stood again in his coat, looking at Sarah’s affectless face, listening to the machines.
“Are you family?” asked a nurse, one he hadn’t met before, a small black woman in cornrows punctuated with glass beads. Her hair clicked as she checked numbers on a screen by Sarah’s bed, jotting them down on a chart.
“We’re guardians to her son. We have power of attorney.” James used “we” even when Ana wasn’t with him.
“Have you spoken to the doctor lately?”
“No. Why?”
“She’s stable, and we’re continuing with therapy. But you need to talk to Dr. Nasir about your plans for her.”
James heard a different kind of question. How could there be plans when she hadn’t come back yet? Or died? James couldn’t imagine any movement between those two possibilities. “What do you mean? Plans for what?” And as he spoke, it came to him: He worked on a documentary about this once, a woman who had been in a coma for a decade; her husband’s wish to divorce her; her family’s outrage. Would they move Sarah into their home, would James wash her body with a sea sponge, change feeding tubes, bedpans? Would Ana pluck stray hairs from Sarah’s chin? He remembered the mother of this woman, her mouth tight from worry, insisting that the strapping young brother wheel her bed into the living room for Christmas. And there she was, year after year, a wedge of person growing older at the side of the room while the tree lights twinkled and grandchildren scattered the trash of their opened gifts.
“Long-term care is one option,” said the nurse, her pen scratching: kstch, kstch, kstch. Such music in this woman, thought James, listening to her hair clicking, her pen. “You have to talk to the doctor about a DNR. Emergency measures. We have counselors here—”
The size of his circumstances came upon James suddenly, an encyclopedia dropped from a top bunk.
“This is fucked,” he said out loud, rubbing his hands through his hair until it stood in a forest of tufts at different furious angles. The woman reading her magazine froze. “We didn’t even know them that well.”
The nurse ceased her scratching and looked at him firmly. “Well, this must be very difficult for you, then.”
James deflated a little. It wasn’t compassion, really; there was a tinge of mockery in it, as if this nurse had seen much worse than James ever could. He nodded.
“I’ll see you soon, Sarah,” he said. He leaned down and gave her a kiss on the top of her head. In her ear, he whispered: “He asks about you.”
Then he stood and, at the door, turned and waved at Sarah.
In the hallway, the nurse appeared again by James’s side.
“It’s not that uncommon,” she said. James looked at her for the first time. She was about his age.
“These days, not everyone has a family. If something happens to me, my kids are going to my doorman. He’s the best person I know.”
James smiled at this. “Did you give him any warning?”
“No need for that,” said the nurse, handing James a photocopied list of phone numbers, counselors’ names. “People rise to the occasion.”
When James opened the door to the house, the scent of cold and streetcar on his jacket, Finn was alone in front of the television watching a small animated hamster singing about summer. He didn’t so much watch TV as sit prostrate before it, concentrating entirely, as if he were a medical student observing an operation. The Moo blanket that Ana had brought from his house was clasped between his fingers. He rubbed and rubbed, frowning. The joylessness around TV concerned James. Ana was letting him watch too much.
“Hey, Finny,” said James. “How was daycare today?”
Finn broke his concentration and grinned upward. “Hi, James! Hamster!” Then he turned back to the TV and vanished again.
Ana was in the kitchen. A small pink plastic plate of spaghetti sat on the island. Ana placed a blue plastic fork beside it.
“How did it go?” she asked.
“It’s done. We’re in charge. It’s official,” said James, and he beat his chest for emphasis. In one hand, he had a Ziploc bag that he placed before Ana. Plastic parts of a cell phone, the silver of a broken chip.
“This is all they found?”
“The police have a few other things. They’ll be released when the investigation is settled.”
Ana put her hand on the bag of phone parts. “Was it awful today?”
James considered this. “Neutral. It was like opening a bank account. Lawyers.” He was trying for a joke, but Ana didn’t respond.
“The body’s been cremated,” said James. “I guess I arranged that.” It occurred to James that Marcus’s dying was becoming his new job.
“Oh—will we get the ashes?” asked Ana. “What will we do with them?”
“Save the box for Finn, I guess. When he’s older.”
Ana pictured a grown man with Finn’s little boy face tossing ashes into a roiling sea.
“I know you don’t want to talk about it, but the funeral …” said James.
“I think we should wait.”
“What about closure?”
Ana raised her eyebrows. “You don’t actually believe that exists, do you?”
James sighed. “You’re right. It’s bullshit.”
“It’s her husband’s funeral. Sarah should be the one to—” said Ana. “She could still wake up.”
“I don’t think she’s waking up.”
He moved a glass of water over an inch on the table. They were quiet for a moment.
“We should still wait,” said Ana. She took James’s glass of water, dumped it in the sink, and put it in the dishwasher.
“I have to go to work,” she said.
“Now? It’s five o’clock.”
“Yes. I missed the afternoon, and we’re busy. I told you. It’s Emcor. Discovery is coming up”
The legal profession’s use of the word “discovery” had always struck James as abuse. “Discovery” was a magic word, one that should only refer to new planets or sexual pleasures. But in law, it meant a bunch of suits interviewing another bunch of suits to drag out enough information to ballast their theories in court.
Finn appeared. “ ’Getti!” he cried, climbing onto the stool. James steadied him, snapping a bib around his neck.
Ana put her laptop in her briefcase, which was filled with days of notes from combing over the definition of “life”: If soybeans could be patented, then what next? What other living things would they see bought and sold in their lifetime? She wanted to tell James about how the case made her heart race. The possibilities were terrifying, exhilarating. But Finn was singing as he ate, filling the room.
James had an urge to tell Ana about visiting Sarah, but something stopped him. Before the accident, his afternoons with Finn had seemed like a judgment on Ana, and he hadn’t told her. Now, these visits to Sarah had come to feel the same. It would be humiliating for Ana to know that her husband was at the bed of another woman over and over while she stayed in her office tower, only blocks away. He told himself this anxiety was ridiculous, and Ana would be happy to have Sarah looked after. But still, he didn’t want to speak until he knew what he needed to say.
Ana leaned in and pecked a kiss on his cheek. From afar, she called: “Good-bye, Finn!” before shutting the door.
At ten o’clock, Ana was not the last to leave the office. The law students stayed, surrounded by their empty Styrofoam food containers. They circled the boardroom table, clicking on their computers. Ana was not sure why they didn’t separate and use their cubicles, but something compelled them to come together at night. She suspected part of the evening was spent updating their Facebook profiles or texting people they sat across from all day. On these late nights, laughter sometimes came out of the room.