Plus One (8 page)

On Tuesnight he had written, “Muir Woods National Monument?” He had drawn an anatomically detailed brain next to that, with comical sweat droplets flinging from it at every angle. But I had never been out of the Midwest, so I crossed out his guess and gave him the hint “Not redwoods, giant cedars.” And then I wrote a number
2
and drew a lighthouse above a rocky beach—the way I remembered it, bathed in the moonlight—towering over the little fog-signaling shack below it, and a cistern of fresh water in the foreground that was a garish fire-engine red if you shone a flashlight on it, so I filled it in with a colored pencil.

On Wednesnight he had written, “Gah! So many lighthouses in the world!” and he had drawn a picture of himself hanging by the neck, with x’s in place of his eyes. Totally gruesome, but it made me laugh out loud when I sat down, causing everyone to stare at me, so I set my books on top of it until they turned away. I smiled every time I looked at that cartoonish self-portrait, and I spent the rest of the week trying to figure out which boy he might have been. I could only rule out the blondest ones, but that probably left something close to five hundred guys, none of whom would have tossed a crust at me if I had been starving to death in front of him in the cafeteria. Toward the end of class I wrote the number
3
and drew a sketch of a tent and a campsite. “I know, I know,” I wrote. “This is not helpful.”

On Thursnight, I wrote the number
4
and drew—as best I could from memory—the half-sunken hull of the
Francisco Morazan
as seen from the beach.

The
Morazan
was a Liberian steel freighter with cargo destined for Holland through the Saint Lawrence Seaway. It was the end of November 1960, and the sailors were a multinational Smudge crew plus the captain—a Greek who was only twenty-four and commanding for the first time. He wanted to complete his run before the lock system in the Seaway froze up for the winter. The forecast was for strong winds in the next few days, but being assigned to a Night dock meant the captain couldn’t leave until after dusk. Once a ship was in open water, there was no Day/Night jurisdiction, but the curfew laws applied in every harbor in the country. So he waited, hoping the winds would hold off until he had passed through the Straits of Mackinac into Lake Huron.

The first night and day of sailing were smooth, but as the
Morazan
passed the Point Betsie light at Frankfort, Michigan, the winds picked up and waves washed over the deck. Snow, fog, and darkness blinded the crew, and the ship ran aground one hundred meters from shore, in less than five meters of water. Everyone had to be evacuated by helicopter and taken by icebreaker to Traverse City.

The
Morazan
became the nesting site of hundreds of cormorants, which I drew as black, goosenecked forms, totally out of scale with the ship. I was no Audubon. Night visitors were allowed one fifteen-minute period of viewing, during which bright floodlights illuminated the ship and the cormorants grunted and croaked like walruses at the disturbance. Poppu had taken us out by dinghy, anticipating the light show. I was so small, I had to peek out over my life vest to see the dead metal hulk, eerie in the artificial light, with its empty portholes, winch hoists that were arched like gnawed ribs, and straw bird nests poking out around the smokestack. I remembered feeling exposed on the water, chilly in the breeze. I tipped back and forth in the inflated raft, wishing the birds would stop growling at us. Now I realized that the cormorants had profited from the shipwreck. Nature had stepped in to make good use of the Day/Night insanity of human beings.

When I sat at my desk the next night, my partner in crime had written in excited letters, “Weather Station Campground, South Manitou Island, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore! I can’t believe you’ve been there, too!” And he had added an adorable picture of one of the ubiquitous island chipmunks pulling an entire sandwich from a lunch sack, like the little thief it was. On South Manitou Island, campers were instructed by rangers to hang their food in trees, because the chipmunks were as aggressive as bears.

At the end of class while I was packing up my books, I realized that, like the drawings of the deer and the brain, his rendering of the chipmunk was skillful and accurate, and it led me to wonder for the first time whether he might be an Artist Apprentice, a coveted and rare assignment. I startled when my teacher said over my shoulder, “It’s Frinight, Michelangelo. Come back at lunchtime to wash off this graffiti.”

“Transient art,” I corrected him.

“And if you’d only snitch on your little friend, I’d gladly force him or her to do half the cleaning. I don’t know why the two of you insist on contributing to the reputation Night students at this school have of being disrespectful punks.”

I threw my backpack over my shoulder and looked him square in the eye. “I don’t know why the Day students have no souls.”

Wednesday
4:00 p.m.

I walked past the nurses’ station straight and tall, striding purposefully but not hurriedly. It took every effort not to hunch and scurry like the Smudge rat I was sure everyone saw when they looked at me. I passed the women’s restroom and found the stairs. There were red letters on the door warning “Alarm will sound,” and the security reader on the wall to the right had a bar of red light. I reached inside the neck of my visitor’s gown and pulled out the ID. I waved it near the reader as I had seen Day Boy do, holding my breath, and after a fraction of a second that felt much longer the light turned green. I left the ID dangling around my neck, but with the photo facing my chest, and walked down to the next level, the first floor. It was no longer maternity here, it was radiology.

I ducked into the public restroom. In a stall, I took the stethoscope out of my back pocket and draped it around my neck, casually, like a doctor. I slipped off the blue booties and stuffed them into the feminine waste container. But I left the cap on my head, because the color of my hair was too memorable. I went to the sink and splashed water on my face, which had the hue of the papier-mâché paste Poppu and I made when I was little, and blue bruises under pink-lidded eyes. Seeing myself in the mirror, I wished the nurse on my stolen ID had been a redhead. I wished I had my phone. I wished I didn’t look so wounded and young. I wished for a lot of hopeless things, and then I took a deep breath and put everything out of my mind except Poppu, at home.

I headed toward the west exit. There was no way I could slip through the east exit with Day Boy’s girlfriend manning the desk; she might recognize me. The baby stretched against her bindings, poking my rib with a little grunt. I ought to have been panicked she would wake up and start wailing right there in the middle of that cavernous lobby. But in my rubbed-raw brain her movements became oddly comforting: I was taking Poppu something real—making a final moment of joy possible for him, a little miracle. And if I was being honest, that baby’s jab also reminded me that for the next hour and a half the tables would be turned on Ciel. I would be the one taking something precious away from him.

There was a mass of people—families, outpatients, and staff—milling toward the revolving door, funneling into a line. The sun was low in the sky, streaming through the glass entry, leaving beams on the floor, illuminating dust motes in the air.

I almost choked on my own spit when I saw two Hour Guards on either side of the revolving door, wearing their stupid helmets even inside, tapping people as they passed.

A random Day check.

It felt like a rubber band was strangling my intestines. My heart beat against the baby. I had to concentrate on slowing my breathing, on not running in the other direction. I had such an urge to step out of the line, to give myself a chance to think, to figure a way out of this, but I knew that I mustn’t call attention to myself. My feet continued shuffling toward the door, while I was mentally paralyzed—too afraid to bolt, too confused to troubleshoot.

I focused on how they were choosing, and whom, and how long it took to check their phones. They were trying to be random, but it seemed like they were selecting men more than women. Each time they tapped someone, that person had to step out of line, a phone had to be produced, the Guard had to activate the phone—twenty seconds for each encounter, at least. There was a good chance I wouldn’t get chosen. Like a wildebeest in a massive herd, the odds of my being taken down by either of those two lions were objectively slim.

That’s the thought I held on to.

The baby squirmed. It was hot in the lobby.

A squeak.

The man in front of me turned around. I coughed. When he turned away, I rubbed my belly—the baby. I patted her. So solid. So warm. She settled down.

Three people in front of me now. A female doctor got chosen by the Guard on the right.
Score,
I thought. What were the chances they’d pick another female staff member to harass, which is what I hoped I looked like? I hid my bandaged finger in my front pocket. I told myself that the hospital lanyard and ID would help me pass as Day, as long as the Guards didn’t flip it over to see the photo. The door kept revolving, and I was almost there. I felt a warm breeze waft in as it spun, smelling of the outdoors mixed with exhaust fumes from the line of cars waiting to drop off or pick up patients. Through the glass I could see valets running with keys toward the parking lot. There was a pigeon roosting on the steel support of the overhang, dirty and haggard, like me.

I was next at the door. I saw my hand go out to give it an extra push. I felt a tap on my left shoulder. I turned to see the black uniform, the helmet, the visor. It was so unexpected, so last-minute, even the woman behind me bumped into me.

“Really?” I said to the Guard, immediately regretting how belligerent I sounded.

“Destination?” he said, slightly annoyed, slightly mechanical. The people behind me were impatient. They wanted to go home; most of them probably had long commutes before curfew. But I wouldn’t step out of line. I refused to give up. I was
so close
.

And then I realized that he hadn’t asked for my phone yet. He hadn’t reached for my fake ID. Thank god, I hadn’t been caught yet.

“I’m going to stand
there
”—I pointed to a cement urn outside filled with sand and cigarette butts—“and take a five-minute smoke break, or go back upstairs right now and kill my Mentor by strangling her with this stethoscope. Which do you think I should do?”

“Get out and calm down,” he said, like my crassness made me the scum of the earth, which it probably did. But it had also freed me.

Wednesday
4:15 p.m.

When I was sure the Hour Guard wasn’t checking on me, I pulled the cap off my head and slipped in step with the crowd of Rays making their way to the train, still putting my faith in the wildebeest strategy, despite the fact that it had already failed me once. The travelers around me had their heads down, with empty faces. They were missing the sights around them, taking their gifts for granted. I wanted to shout at them,
Try having cancer, or never seeing a bee forage for pollen
. Dopes.

I had roughly an hour and fifteen minutes to make the round-trip home and back to the hospital, but I hadn’t anticipated losing my phone and therefore having no money for the train. I walked with a crush of people into the station, and when I was next in line for the turnstiles I made a show of checking my jeans pockets. The young man behind me looked like Business Apprentice material all the way: short hair, suit and tie—the kind of kid who already had a firm handshake and knew how to trade in the pits.

“Crap!” I said, catching his eye. “I lost my monthly pass!”

He scanned me quickly, taking in the enormity of the disaster in front of him. He shook his head like he couldn’t believe his rotten luck for being behind me while everyone else was on their way up to the tracks, couldn’t believe that I was smart enough to be a Medical Apprentice.

“Oh, please,” I begged him, “I won’t catch my train if I have to stop to buy a ticket. Can I share yours?”

“Step out of line,” someone called behind him.

People stopped queuing behind us, choosing the faster lanes instead.

“How can anyone be such a mess,” the boy said rather than asked, shoving his card into the slot.

“It takes more effort than you’d believe.” I felt the turnstile unlock against my weight. I pushed through, grabbed the card on the other end, leaned as far as I could to hand it back to him, and said, “Thank you. You don’t know what this means to me.” I hurried up the stairs to the train, and then stopped short when I reached the platform.

There was another pair of Hour Guards boarding the first car as arriving passengers disembarked. Running into a random check twice in the span of ten minutes—that had never happened to me at night. I stepped back, lingering, watching through the train’s windows. The cars filled quickly; passengers found their seats and began reading, checking their phones, settling in for a nap, while others stood, holding poles and handgrips with blank faces. The Hour Guards inspected the phone IDs of their first victims, and then moved down the car slowly, examining the passengers, choosing their prey. There was no way I would survive that scrutiny. I looked down the length of the train. Should I board the last car? Would they make their way all the way to the end before my stop, which was only about eleven minutes away? The four-tone gong sounded and an automated voice said, “The doors are closing.” I held the baby firmly through the hoodie and visitor’s gown, and I hurried to the first door of the first car, boarding right behind the Guards. It was a gamble, but I hoped that they wouldn’t turn around and start over, I prayed they’d just keep moving.

A man got up to give me his seat.

“That’s okay,” I said, shaking my head, panicked that he was calling attention to me. And then I remembered I was pregnant, so I forced a smile and sat down. He moved to reach a strap, which put his body squarely between me and the view of the Guards.
Such luck.
My shoulders relaxed; I hadn’t even known I was clenching them by my neck.