Lie Still (17 page)

She told me, “Take off all your clothes,” which I quickly and gladly did. The fire had warmed the cabin well, and nakedness, once achieved, seemed like such an obvious choice I was mildly embarrassed I hadn’t thought of it my-LIE STILL

121

self. She motioned for me to do as she was doing and got a delighted smile when I gained full posture.

Among its many attributes, though, cocaine is an anesthetic. Officially, a topical and local anesthetic—the chemical precursor of novocaine—it certainly seemed a sexual anesthetic, too. I could find no tension, nothing compelling me to move forward, only satisfaction in that exact moment.

Which left her to direct. She motioned me onto her and pulled me inside. “Feeling passive tonight, Malcolm?” she whispered directly into my ear. I could only smile and quicken my pace.

She put her hands on my hips and forcibly slowed me.

“On this high,” she said, “we go slowly. Mmmm. Slowly.”

She rolled us over, raised herself to sitting, and stayed tautly still but for a slow rhythm of pelvic squeezes. I closed my eyes, smiled like the fool I was, and whispered, “I love your pussy.”

“Mmmmm. You’re a bad boy.”

This was possibly the longest fuck on record. Eventually we moved to the rugs in front of the fire. In my altered state the whole focus became fucking: the feeling, groping, prob-ing, kissing, licking, tasting, smelling, working, sweating pleasures of the acts of fucking. As opposed to coming. I could not have cared less about that, and by all available signs, she felt the same way.

After what seemed to be hours, however, I realized that such an encounter deserved a climax. There were clear signs of exhaustion in both of us. I felt the inevitable falling drug level with its counter-euphoria and figured that it would have to be soon or not at all. I began to work in that direction, and work it was. With much concentration and finally a bit of grunting, I achieved a short and ragged orgasm, then fell to my side, gasping. It was clear Mimi was not so inclined. She murmured something unintelligible and began to fondle my rapidly departing organ. I reflexively jerked away. She made a pouty face and went into the bathroom.

Evidently the neurohormonal mechanism in the male brain that insists on sleep postclimax is stronger than cocaine. I re-122

DAVID FARRIS

member a minute or two of drifting exhaustion, the fire needing wood, Mimi going to pee, then returning to our “bed”

with a big sheet and two blankets, and the next thing I knew I was startled—painfully—awake. It was pitch black and my head hurt. I was waking up to the sounds of a woman alternately shrieking and sobbing, but no bed under me bouncing, only the stiffness of the floor. I bolted to sitting. It took me at least three long gasps and blinks to remember where I was and who was beside me.

When the “Mimi” part of my memory woke up and engaged itself in the fray, I came very acutely face-to-face with my place in our relationship. I, the subordinate and the invited guest, facing a superior in mid-breakdown. How familiar, how presumptive should I be? I hardly had the emotional stature there to take the role of mate, despite our frequent matings. Very clearly though, she needed something, someone, and I was the only possibility. I put my arms around her. I needn’t have worried: She immediately turned into my chest, now just sobbing and gasping.

“Mimi,” I said. “What’s wrong?” Just sobs. “Nightmare?”

“Um-mmm.”

“It’s okay, we’re here. I’m here. Malcolm. I’ve got you.”

A stuttered “Malcolm.”

“You’re okay.” We rocked gently and the crying ebbed away to an occasional staccato sigh. I gently broke away to tend the fire. I stirred the ashes in the fireplace and threw in some newspaper and kindling. A single tail of smoke began to wind upwards. I got a cold washcloth from the bathroom.

She rubbed her eyes.

“I keep having this awful dream,” she said in broken cadence. “Way, way the worst tonight.” She wiped her eyes with the bedsheet. “I’m sorry, Malcolm.”

“Oh Jesus, Mimi. Don’t be sorry. I’m just glad I’m here to hold you. What was it?”

“You don’t need to hear it,” she said.

“No. You should tell me. Get it out.” I was trying to be polite.

“It starts out the same. I’m in the OR. Lost.”

LIE STILL

123

“I had dreams like that during the first half of internship,”

I said. “Whatever service I was on, I’d have dreams about some patient there crashing, and me having to do some emergency something that I didn’t know how to do yet.”

“But . . . No, it’s different. I remember those dreams, too, but this is different.”

“How so?” I said, yawning.

“It’s awful,” she sobbed again. “I’m lost in a maze of ORs. I go out one door and it’s another OR. And they’re doing heart surgery in one and spine surgery in one but brain surgery in most of the others. Everyone stares at me. The nurses, the other surgeons, the residents. Everyone. In one of the rooms there’s blood on the floors and the walls and even the ceilings. I woke up this time when I saw the blood dripping from the ceiling. And the nurses and all the surgeons are staring at me!” She burst into tears again.

She gathered herself together and sat up. “Tonight, in tonight’s dream, I’m naked from the waist down. Running around the OR half-naked. And one of the nurses is laughing, pointing at my leg, saying that must be ‘come’ running down my thigh.” She was sobbing again. “And I say, ‘Oh, it’s okay, it’s Dr. Dreamboat’s,’ ” she practically wailed.

“But she doesn’t hear me. None of them can hear me.

They’re just laughing and pointing.”

I had wrapped her up again and began gently rocking again. “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I droned.

“I get so lost,” she sobbed.

“You’re not lost,” I said.

“I do. I get so lost. In the OR.”

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t . . . I can’t . . . I can’t find exactly where I should be,” she sobbed.

“Is this like that dream of being chased? Somebody’s after you and you’re stuck to the floor?”

She leaned away from me to the end table and a box of Kleenex. “Something like that.”

“But you can’t find your way to the OR?”

“No, worse . . .” She blew her nose.

124

DAVID FARRIS

“What? Feet stuck in the quicksand? Monsters chasing you?”

“Inside the head.” The newspaper and kindling I’d laid on the grate burst into flame with an audible
poof
.

“What?”

“I get so lost inside the head. I can’t see things in three dimensions. I’ve never been able to. I stare at the head. I try to line it all up, just like McWhorten taught me, but nothing comes.” She was crying again.

I was staring at her in the fire glow. She looked terrified.

“I start each operation bright-eyed. Full of optimism.

‘This is going to be the one. This time it will all work the way they say.’ I make an incision, turn a flap, dive in . . .”

“No. You know the anatomy better than anyone. . . .”

“Sure, I can recite it. But I can’t see it. In my head, like I should. I memorize the fucking CTs, cut by cut, but I can never stack them up again, you know, in my mind to re-create the whole. I can’t roll things around in three dimensions and see what’s on the other side. I never could. I just don’t think in three dimensions. Ever. It tortures me, knowing it, having to hide it. I wall up.” She stared through me.

“I’m
so-o
tough,” she sobbed.

I put my arms around her again. I stared into the flames, my faith in my chosen profession burning around me. I thought of Keith Coles and his wife and children. Casualties. I needed something to hold on to. Even straws would be good.

“Mimi, I’ve always hated analyzing dreams. They’re nothing but anxiety playgrounds and I have more than enough anxieties when I’m awake,” I said, trying to laugh a little. I realized my face was in a knot. I closed my eyes and made my forehead and cheeks relax. When I opened my eyes she was staring at me with fear. I could only stare back.

She pulled away. “It’s my daytime nightmare,” she said, trying to laugh, too.

I cringed but forced a short chortle. “Yeah, we all have them.” My throat was closing down. I mustered a pathetic smile. I escaped terror by redirecting the conversation. “But who is this ‘other man’? The guy you call Dr. Dreamboat?”

LIE STILL

125

She half laughed through a sob. “ ‘Dreamboat’ is my code name for a neurosurgeon I know—kind of. He’s out in Scottsdale.”

I gave her a quizzical look. “What’s my code name?” I asked.

She laughed again. “You don’t have one.”

“Yet,” I said.

“Yet,” she agreed. “But it will be a good one. Promise.”

“I’ll look forward to it. So who is Dr. Dreamboat?”

“Oh God. A great man. Busy practice in the ritziest hospital in Scottsdale. Must make a fortune. He was on backup call, covering for Ed Adams one weekend when Ed was in New Mexico getting some Grand Old Man award from the fucking Boy Scouts. I got into an aneurysm case, up to my earlobes, again. It was a Friday night. At first I thought I had the thing, but my view kept slipping away. I had to call for help, again. He was the one who answered. I had not met him but I knew of him, knew who he was. He came to help.

He scrubbed in, sat beside me. Smelled nice. Had incredible eyes. Mmm. That’s all you see over a surgical mask, but in his case it’s enough.” She was just staring.

“And what happened?”

“He moved a couple of retractors and slid the clip under and around that little . . . pulsating . . . cherry . . . like he was born to it. I just kind of sat there in awe. I think he was a bit surprised that it turned out to be really fairly easy, at least for him. Maybe there is such a thing as a routine aneurysm for a man like him.”

I said nothing.

“Anyway, he’s an absolutely gorgeous man. I got kind of a crush. Actually, I got a raging crush. Why not? He was a white knight. My white knight.” Her voice tailed off. She turned to stare into the fire. The dancing red light bounced from the wetness in her eyes. She said quietly, “I told you I like fantasies.” I had only to think back to her lying on the sofa not too many hours earlier to have what I thought was a clear idea of what she meant. She smiled at me.

“A few nights later, when I was home alone and feeling 126

DAVID FARRIS

sorry for myself, especially after some wine, I wrote him a thank-you note. Not just a simple ‘Thanks, you’re swell.’

No, I practically spread my legs for him. I had drunk too much. I suggested a date of some kind. I don’t even remember exactly what I wrote, but I was so far gone into the fantasy of it all that I walked to the mailbox at midnight and sent away my little missive, sealed with a kiss.”

“Did he ever say anything?”

“No. He never replied and I didn’t run into him for probably three years. It was at a Western Society meeting. I tried to be, I guess, entirely professional, and he did, too. He didn’t bring up any of it. Didn’t ask for a date, either.”

“Probably all for the better,” I said.

“Well, it just left the thing hanging out there. I almost wish he had laughed at me or something, so I could have defended myself, or at least known what he thought about it. Or if he even remembered it at all.”

She lay back down and curled up on her side. I laid in some firewood and went to the bathroom. Once back in bed I lay flat on my back, makeshift pillow stuffed under my neck to give it some stretch. It felt like my brain was trying to pound its way out of my skull and my gut was toying with the idea of something cathartic. Sleep was slow to come.

8

There are rules, maxims, and Lessons for Life to be had,
working in Adrienne’s Quiet Little ERs Where Nothing Ever
Happens. A gem I’ve noticed about fathers who run over
their sons’ heads with trucks: They always get them twice.

I’ve seen three in my career. All three were dads and sons.

Sons ranged from six months to fourteen months. The first,
from my intern days, happened at the continuous summer-time party along the Salt River outside Phoenix. Along a
ten-mile vestige of river left only as a conduit between the
last of the dams and the city’s intake diversion, ten or
twelve thousand revelers float in inner tubes, cavorting on
their future drinking water, pretreating it with beer, sun-screen, and pee.

The baby brought to us had been set, in his car seat,
under the back of the Jeep for a nap in the shade. Later,
probably getting low on beer, Dad hopped in and backed
up. Big thunk. “What was that?” Go the other way. Big
thunk again. Massive head trauma doesn’t always kill you
right away; it can take twenty-four hours or longer. I imagine, though, that the recrimination, the divorce, the suicide
fill up years.

The one brought in from the prairie hinterlands last
month was a fourteen-month-old. We guessed he was crawl-128

DAVID FARRIS

ing under the truck to fetch a ball, or maybe hiding from his
older brothers. Dad went to reposition the truck so he could
get the barn door closed. Big thunk. “What was that?” Go
the other way. Big thunk again. The surgeon I called said it’s
a natural choice in driving—if you might be up against
something, better go the other way. He said we all do it.

I have a different theory: I think it’s our need to make certain that we’re really, truly in a world of shit before we’ll get
off our butts to try to change something.

T H E B O O K O F M I M I , C H A P T E R S I X

The Morning After.

After beer and wine and cocaine, after exhaustive sex, after Mimi’s nightmare and after teasing sleep on a stone floor, I came to consciousness with considerable fear and loathing. Our quaint and timeless adobe hideaway had mutated into a chilled and fireless old mud hut lost deep in a desert canyon.

Mimi was up and making coffee, wearing an extra-large sweatshirt and bags under her eyes. There was a palpable presence of something unwelcome.