The Invisible Life of Ivan Isaenko (15 page)

Wednesdays are also med days. If there are meds to be delivered, it happens during breakfast hour on a Wednesday. On this particular Wednesday, I had forgotten it was a Wednesday for all the obvious reasons. So when I saw Nurse Katya approach the table with her big box of plastic Baggies tucked in her big brown arms, I instinctively made my guesses for the week. As usual, the ginger twins, Alex, Dennis, and the heart-hole children all had normal six-month bags. I also correctly called Anton, the ten-year-old autistic progerian, who received a three-month bag. But on this day, for the first time ever, I was wrong. On this Wednesday in the month of November, Nurse Katya dropped a bag in front of Polina that was about half the size of her usual med day bag.

I was surprised to find out just how many thoughts could arrive in the width of a second if the circumstances are right. Thoughts like thought Number One:
Well, less of a thought and more of a complete body experience of devastation
. Thought Number Two:
Polina had not been here long enough nor did she have (yet) a sufficiently morbid enough sense of curiosity to know about the two classes of patients at the hospital. Nor is there an adequate system of communication here which would have helped Polina to understand the meaning of her reduced-sized bag of pills. This meant that Polina had no idea that she had somewhere between one day and three months left to live. It also meant that the only two people who did know were me and Nurse Katya and whatever higher powers decided that Polina was about to die
. Thought Number Three:
Everyone deserves to know when they are going to die
. Thought Number Four:
Thought Number Three is all wrong
. If not for the fear, death is just a word, and if I never tell her she doesn't have to be afraid. Thought Number Five:
Thought Number Four is all wrong. Knowing when one is going to die helps one to make informed decisions about how one would live one's last days
. Thought Number Six:
Somebody needs to tell her
. Thought Number Seven:
It is me or Nurse Katya. I can't even look her in the eye, so it must be Nurse Katya
. Thought Number Eight:
I need to talk to Nurse Katya
.

All these thoughts arrived in this sequence in about the time it took for my bite of food to drop from my lips. I had hoped that Polina would not notice this, but Nurse Katya would. Unfortunately, it was the other way around; I could feel the heat of Polina's clearly disgusted eyes baking my skin while Nurse Katya aloofly continued to pass out her pills. I decided it might be easier to get her attention by taking a dull butter knife to the nub that would have been my inner thigh and doing my best to get a nontrivial stream of blood flowing. This resulted in a suitable commotion of crying among the heart-holes, an unbearable eruption of “
Shoko
” by Alex, and some Olympic-style rocking by Dennis, which was, of course, enough to get Nurse Katya to drop her box of meds and scream, “Christ, Ivan! In the name of Saint Thomas Aquinas!”

Now, the sight of blood makes me pass out, even if it's my own, so by the time I saw her run over to me, the cabbage on my plate turned blurry, and my face fell flat into my partially chewed bite. When I woke up I was in the White Room. The first thing I saw was Nurse Katya's big brown arms slapping my droopy cheeks back and forth.

“I'm awake, I'm awake,” I said.

To which she responded by slapping me twice more, harder. I tasted a bit of blood, which almost made me pass out again.

“Why in the hell would you do that?” she asked.

“Were you worried about me?” I asked.

“Not in the least. But now the hospital is in a frenzy, and I have a pint of blood to mop up. And don't you even think I'm about to change that,” she said, motioning to the blood-soaked gauze that was taped over my nub.

“I can handle it,” I said.

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I need a favor.”

“Yes, I need a favor too. I need someone to mop the blood off the floor.”

“I'll do it if you do me a favor back.”

“There's more chance of getting struck by lightning, child.”

“You wouldn't be helping me. You need to tell Polina she's dying.”

“She knows she's dying,” she said while pouring water into the mop bucket.

“I need you to tell her that she's dying in less than three months.”

“How do I know when she's dying?”

“You know she's a three-monther.”

“Ivan, what in the hell is a three-monther?”

“The kids who get the small bags.”

“Not my job, Ivan.”

“Then whose job is it?”

“Not mine.”

“Is it anyone's job?”

“Nope.”

“So you're saying it's no one's job to tell people when they are going to die in a place where people die all the time?”

“Yes, that is what I'm saying,” she said, and she left the White Room with her bucket and mop.

I gave myself sixty seconds to bring myself together. Sixty, fifty-nine, fifty-eight …

By fifty, forty-nine … I fell out of my chair.

By forty-three, forty-two … water was trying to work its way out of my eyes.

By fifteen, fourteen … I had successfully sucked most of the water back into my eyes.

By one … I was back in my chair.

By zero, I was frantically wheeling myself to Nurse Natalya, who was also the only person left who could fix this. I started with the Blue Room (laundry room), then the Red Room, then the Yellow Room, but she was nowhere. I went to the front desk, where I found Miss Kristina chewing on an already overchewed pen.

“Where's Natalya?” I asked.

“She's not here today,” she said.

“Where is she?”

“Niece's baptism or something.”

“You need to call her.”

“Ivan, I c—”

“Yes, you can. I will dial the number.”

“She is at the Mass.”

“Don't you know that baptisms don't happen at 8:00 in the
A.M.
? Actually, no you wouldn't because you're an idiot.”

“That was mean.”

“That was true.”

“There is a reason I won't let you call. Would you like to know the reason?”

“Not really.”

“I'm not supposed to ever let you use the phone again since the time that you made a hundred long-distance phone calls in one night.”

“For one, that was three years ago; for two, someone is going to die.”

She looked down at my bloody gauze in alarm.

“Is it you?” she asked.

“Yes, and I need Natalya.”

“I think we should just call one of the other nurses over here. Everyone else—”

“I can't talk to them.”

She responded with a face that said,
I understand exactly what you mean …

She put the phone up to my ear and asked, “Do you need her number?”

To which I said:

“No, I remember.”

To which she said:

“Hurry.”

It took about twenty-seven seconds for my clumsy index finger to spin through all the numbers. It was 8:00 in the
A.M.
, so I hoped she was awake, and if she was awake that she wasn't praying. As I had already learned, hope, like prayer, almost never works. Only being a pest works. The phone rang through seventeen times, and no one picked up. So I hung up the phone and started all over again, which was met with various protests from Miss Kris, which I adroitly fended off. Then, after eight more rings:

“Ivan?”

To which I was startled but responded:

“How did you know it was me?”

“I'll be there in ten minutes.”

Then she hung up.

Nine minutes later, she plowed through the double front doors, in a heavy black coat, and no nurse's uniform. In seventeen years, I don't know if I had ever seen her without her scrubs. Her chubby little figure immediately charged over to me, took the handlebars on my chair, and wheeled me off to a quiet stairwell on the third floor. Then she threw her arms around me and started to sob.

“Ivan, my baby, I know about your
Dear Diary
game,” she confessed through her tears. Her crying motivated me to cry.

Then I said:

“Sorry for interrupting baptism day.”

To which she replied:

“Oh, stop it!”

Then we cried some more, and when we finished, she dried us both off and wheeled me back to my room, which is when I asked:

“Can you tell her?”

“Who else?” she asked, which I knew was a rhetorical question, so I didn't respond.

She left, and I decided to hide in my room for the rest of the day while I alternatingly read various medical books and attempted unsuccessfully to masturbate.

The next morning, we were all back at the breakfast table, precisely the same characters in precisely the same configuration, but this time, Polina and I both knew she was dying. All I could think to do was send her a forced smile from across the breakfast table (or at least as much of a smile as my droopy cheeks could muster). I was shocked by how easy it was to get a smile back considering the circumstances. I concede it was a courtesy smile, no doubt about it. It was a smile that said, “I'm weak, tired, and dying, and you are a freak, but, despite these facts, social courtesy dictates that I reciprocate your kind sentiment.” And maybe, just maybe, she was also charmed by it on some level.

I decided at that moment that breakfast would become my training ground. I would use a system of smiles and glances to slowly melt the ice and desensitize myself to her Goddessness. Every morning I would wait for her to be ushered to her spot at the breakfast table, while I exercised my cheek muscles with a series of techniques that I developed to improve my smile. Every morning, when she finally arrived, I would patiently wait for her eyes to randomly move in my direction, and when they did, I would pitch my best beam. And every morning, she would reflect it back to me.

Eventually, I wouldn't have to wait for her eyes to randomly meet mine. She would come to expect my smile, relish it maybe, and consequently when she took her place at the table, her first impulse would be to look over to me and receive it. Soon I would be glancing over at her several times during each meal, partly to deepen my desensitization regimen and partly to fish for any reason to tell myself that she would see some inexplicable beauty in me.

I had hoped for at least three more years to complete the systematic desensitization required to achieve the comfort and confidence required to verbalize utterances to Polina. But, as the universe would have it, we would not even get three more months. In reality, we would only have three more weeks, which, of course, reminds me of Maxwell Maltz's 1960 book,
Psycho-Cybernetics,
which explains that it takes exactly twenty-one days to establish a new habit.

 

PART TWO

The Count Down

DAY 21

Hazing and Initiation

The next morning, I prepared all my facial muscles for breakfast. I knew she would instinctually turn to me, if for no other reason than there was no one else to turn to. And she did. But I couldn't. I knew the second I lost my focus, the pseudosmile would snap back to the other face that I was actually feeling. This was a contingency I had not planned for.

Of course, Nurse Natalya witnessed all this, as she was particularly curious about my next play. So, in response to my coldness, she took it upon herself that at the onset of TV hour she would, without my consent, and for the first time ever, wheel me right up next to Polina's wheelchair so close together that our elbows touched, skin-to-skin, closer than ever, and leave me there to drown in whatever storm erupted.

Reader, please understand this: this was the first time I ever had non-nurse epidermal contact with anyone at all, let alone Polina. I was completely unprepared, and consequently my pee pole jumped to full attention, twitched to the rhythm of my escalating pulse, and pushed the fabric of my shorts taut.

Now, it may be difficult for you to imagine a mutant with one arm to harbor any trace of self-consciousness. But please believe me when I tell you that this was my most horrifying twenty-two seconds on record. I instinctively used my one flailing arm to conceal the protrusion in any way possible, but this only brought more attention to the situation. As artfully as possible, I tucked my
Hui
between the nubs that would have been my legs and clenched them together to keep it hidden. I waited several painful moments for the fallout to die down. I was red and sopping with sweat. But this didn't keep Polina from speaking.

“Natalya told me.”

I just sat silently and sweat some more.

“Ivan, are you okay?”

“I like your hair, Polina.”

“It's a wig, Ivan.”

The next hour was an incandescent blur. A hazy smear of conversation that I do not remember but only know resulted in a phase transition in my life and Polina's. From that moment on, we talked through most TV hours and met after lights-out for shenanigans and banter and anything else that might make us feel less lonely. We began by discussing the weather and eventually moved on to our pet peeves and then to our preferred methods of paying rent if we had another chance. Nurse Natalya, of course, was thrilled by our brewing courtship and did everything possible to cultivate it. She raided the homes of her relatives for old Russian games. Then she would secretly wheel us out to the Main Room after lights-out and let us play unchaperoned. Looking back through diminishing vodka eyes, these nights seem so perfectly surreal. Reader, in that place, at that time, Polina wasn't dying, and I wasn't a mutant. We shed our bodies and met in another place.

 

DAY 20

The Day We Contributed to Max's Rearing