Golden State: A Novel

Tell me a story, he said.

So I told him about my first morning in San Francisco. It was July, summer in the city, foggy and cold. I was tired and jet-lagged and had yet to unpack, but I wanted to see the famous California coast. I took a bus over the Golden Gate Bridge to San Rafael, where I boarded a shuttle to Point Reyes.

Alone, I wandered along the cliffs in the freezing fog, out to the lighthouse. I stood gazing at the roaring Pacific, a crazy-looking ocean, infinitely more dangerous and dramatic than the Gulf Coast waters I knew so well. On a small hill above a meadow, I followed a picket fence for several hundred yards, curious where it led. And then, without warning, the fence abruptly ended. A narrow ditch split the ground in two; on the other side, the fence continued on its way.

A middle-aged man stood with a boy of about seven. The man was on one side of the ditch, the boy on the other. They held hands across the divide. “We’re on top of the San Andreas Fault,” the man explained to the child. “This used to be one long, straight fence. When the earthquake hit in 1906, it broke the fence in half and moved it sixteen feet.”

I imagined the earth moving in one swift, startling motion, rearranging everything in an instant. Battling a sudden feeling of vertigo, I placed a hand on the fence to steady myself. What was I doing here? California might as well have been another country. Back home, we had hurricanes and tornadoes, thunderstorms so violent they shook the house to its very bones. But this was different.

12:41 p.m., June 15

The reception area of the tiny hotel is eerily empty. On the desk, a coffee mug smeared with red lipstick sits beside a small television, the volume turned up high, blaring news of the vote. Eleanor’s mug, Eleanor’s lipstick. Famously difficult Eleanor.

I leave my crutches behind and use the rail to pull myself up the stairs. At the top, I turn left. The first room is empty, the door open to reveal two twin beds, an old dresser, blood on the floor.

I continue along the hallway. The second door is closed. Room 2B. Heather’s room. Early this morning, while I was still sleeping on the couch of a radio station at the other end of the city, my phone began to vibrate. It was Heather, texting:
It’s time
. It seems like a lifetime ago.

“Heather?”

I try the knob, but it doesn’t budge.

“Heather?”

I knock. Again, no answer.

Finally, a scraping sound, furniture moving across the floor. The knob turns, the door opens a few inches, and there she is—red in the face, her T-shirt drenched with sweat, her eyes strangely calm. Her gaze takes in my wrecked face, my filthy clothes, the hastily wrapped bandage on my foot.

I squeeze through the doorway. On the opposite wall, a bureau is shoved against a tall window that opens onto a balcony. To my left, as far as possible from the window, stands the bed, the sheets twisted and wet.

“When I saw him coming toward the hotel,” she tells me, “I barricaded the door. When he left, I barricaded the window.”

She shuts the door behind me, then locks it. Together we shove the desk back into place.

“What happened next door?”

“He had Eleanor,” she says. “Sounded bad.”

Heather doubles over in pain, moaning. I limp to her side. She grips my arm so tight I can feel her fingernails through my sweater. Seconds pass before her face relaxes. She catches her breath, lowers herself onto the bed. “What’s the difference between a pregnant woman and a lightbulb?” she asks.

“Got me.”

“You can unscrew a lightbulb.”

I smile, happy to see the Heather I know.

In the bathroom, I wash my face and hands. I smell terrible and look worse. The skin under my arms is bleeding, rubbed raw from the crutches. Rummaging through Heather’s cosmetics bag, I am grateful for the small miracle of a rubber band. I gather my hair into a ponytail, drink cold water from the faucet, and rinse my mouth with toothpaste.

I scan the bathroom for anything useful. There’s a small bar of soap, two towels hanging beside the stained tub, an empty waste bin beneath the sink. I grab the towels and bin and hobble into the darkened room. I drag a chair up to the end of the bed and drape a blanket over Heather’s knees.

“Are there any cops out there?” she asks.

“Just one terrified kid.”

She clutches the sheets as another contraction seizes her. Her face registers the pain, but she is silent. Thirty seconds pass before she collapses back onto the pillow, panting.

“Where’s the National Guard?” she asks.

“Sacramento and L.A., I guess.”

A foghorn wails in the distance—that familiar, soothing sound. “Scoot down,” I say. “Here comes the fun part.”

“When I said I didn’t need the bells and whistles, I didn’t quite picture it like this.” She moves toward the end of the bed.

“The baby’s going to be fine,” I say, mustering my calmest voice.

I lift the blanket to examine her. I’m not an ob-gyn, I’m a general internist. This is not what I do. Of course, I did it during my residency years—a month on the maternity ward at San Francisco General—but I was relieved beyond measure when my time was over.

Just to the west of us, beyond the barricaded window and the empty parking lot, is the Veterans Administration hospital. The six-unit hotel is normally booked with veterans’ families, waiting out heart surgery and organ transplants, but today the place is deserted. All but the most crucial surgeries have been postponed, and the whole campus is running on a bare-bones staff.