“Much more important,” he said, smiling again. “I am a star patient.”
“I’m sorry,” Maria Elena said, feeling sudden embarrassment.
“Don’t you be sorry,” he told her. “I’ll be sorry for both of us.” It was strange to have such a skeletal figure behave in that elfin fashion. But then his expression became more sober, and he looked past her out the rear window of the car, saying, “If I had the strength, I might march with you.”
She read the connection immediately: “You mean, the nuclear industry is why you’re sick?”
“Nuclear industry,” he echoed, as though the words contained a joke only he understood.
The young woman driving said tonelessly, “Grigor was at Chernobyl.”
Something constricted Maria Elena’s throat. Unable to speak, unsure even what to call the emotion that had suddenly flooded her, she reached out to fold her palm over his bony shoulder. So bony.
He smiled over her hand at her. Gently, to make her feel better, he said, “I’ve had time to get used to it.”
18
Forty-five minutes later, Susan was alone in the car with Andy Harbinger, driving south on the Taconic, heading toward New York. How it had worked out that way she still didn’t quite understand.
Grigor had taken charge of Mrs. Auston at the hospital, which was a research center, not a regular hospital at all, and so without an emergency room. The doctor Grigor finally rounded up for the task of examining Mrs. Auston’s wound and then bandaging it was wildly overqualified for the job, but took it in good spirit. That was no surprise; the entire hospital staff was friendly and supportive and indulgent toward Grigor.
Meantime, one of the other doctors had taken Susan aside and told her that tomorrow’s outing with Grigor would not be possible. “Grigor doesn’t know it yet,” this doctor said, “but we’ll be starting a new therapy in the morning, and generally it’s going to be unpleasant for him for a few days. He should be in better condition by next weekend, but tomorrow he’s going to be quite sick.”
“Oh, poor Grigor.”
“You know this routine by now, Susan,” the doctor said. “We make him very sick from time to time, because the other option is that he dies.”
“You don’t want me to tell him about tomorrow?”
“Why give him a sleepless night?”
So she had lied to him — “See you tomorrow!” “See you tomorrow!” — hating it but knowing it was better than the alternative, and then as she was heading for the exit Andy Harbinger appeared and asked if she was driving back to the city today, and if so, could he hitch a ride, since he felt no need to see any more of today’s demo. It was impossible to say no, and in fact Susan didn’t particularly want to say no. She was feeling glum, and the two-hour drive back to the city could get boring.
Then there was Mrs. Auston. She wanted nothing but to get back with her protest group, so Susan brought her along as well. The three of them left the hospital and drove together as far as the power plant entrance, which was much calmer than before, the TV crews having all left, though the demonstration continued. Mrs. Auston, a strange self-absorbed woman, left the car with only minimal thanks to her rescuers, and then Susan and Andy Harbinger drove on down the road to the Taconic entrance and headed south.
Once they were on the highway, streaming with moderate traffic toward the far-off city, the late afternoon sun reddening ahead and to the right, Andy Harbinger broke into Susan’s fretful thoughts about Grigor by saying, “Susan? Do you mind if I interview you?”
“What?” At first, the words made no sense at all; she frowned at him, ignoring traffic, finding it hard to see his face clearly in the orangey sunlight. “I’m sorry, what?”
He smiled, his manner easy, non-threatening, friendly. “I’m always working,” he apologized. “I can’t help it. And I noticed, when Mrs. Auston and I first got into the car, when you thought I was one of the demonstrators, you disapproved of me.”
Feeling the heat of embarrassment rise into her cheeks, Susan faced the road again, gazing steadfastly through the windshield as she said, “Disapprove? That’s a funny word. I didn’t say anything like that.”
“You didn’t say anything, but it was in your expression and the tone of your voice.” Harbinger grinned at her. “I’m not trying to get you mad, Susan,” he said. “It’s just my professional nature. You’re good friends with that Russian guy. With that illness of his, I’d think you’d be on the side of the demonstrators.”
“Until they get ugly,” Susan said, and then was sorry she’d been prodded into giving any reaction at all.
Because, of course, now he burrowed in a little more, saying, “Ugly? I guess they are, sometimes. But isn’t it because they feel powerless? They’re trying to make themselves heard. It isn’t easy.”
“No, I know it isn’t,” Susan said, uncomfortable at having to defend a position that even to herself sounded prissy, narrow-minded, irrelevant. “And I do agree with them. It’s... it’s when there’s violence, then I can’t stand it. When people are doing violent things, they make themselves wrong, even if they were right to begin with.”
Gently, he said, “And if there’s no other way?”
“There’s always another way,” Susan insisted, even though she wasn’t herself sure that was true. Then she thought of something to bolster her argument and added, “Gandhi always found another way.”
He chuckled that off the field, saying, “Gandhi was a saint.”
“Then we should all be saints.”
This response seemed to capture him in some way she didn’t understand. Looking at her more openly, twisting to put his right shoulder blade against the door so he could face her more fully, he said, “You keep surprising me, Susan. You really do.”
If he’s trying to pick me up, she thought, it’s a very weird method. She shot him a quick glance, trying to read beneath that open friendly face, and when she looked away from his impenetrable smile, out at the road again, he was reminding her of somebody or something. Who? What?
Mikhail. Whatever his name was, Mikhail something, the nice economist at the party in Moscow, where she’d first met Grigor; where all this started.
As though reading her mind, he said, “Your Russian friend — Grigor, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Grigor.”
“Do you think he agrees with you? About the protestors. That they should give it less than their all.”
“That isn’t what I said! Not give their all, what do you mean?” She was really annoyed with him, for twisting her words like that.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and tried to smile the offense away. “I apologize, that was careless phrasing. All I was trying to ask, really, was do you think Grigor would disagree with the protestors if they resorted to violence?”
Reluctantly, but having to be honest, Susan said, “No, I don’t think so. I think he’d agree. Before you got into the car, he even said so. When we were driving down toward the demonstration, he said, ‘They’re right.’” She looked over at him again, seeing concern and sympathy now on his face, and she told that face, “Grigor’s almost never bitter, you know. He’s amazing that way. He has so much to be bitter about.”
“Life is unfair,” he suggested.
Ignoring the coldness in that, “It shouldn’t be,” she said.