Woman on the Edge of Time

Who could ever pay for the pain of bringing a child into dirt and pain? Never enough. Nothing you wanted to give her you ever could give her, including yourself, what you wanted to be with her and for her. Nothing you wanted for her could come true. Who could ever pay for the pain of rising day after day year after year in a dim room dancing with cockroaches, and looking out on a street like a sewer of slow death? All her life it felt to her she had been dying a cell at a time, a cell of hope, of joy, of love, little lights going out one by one. When her body had turned all to pain, would she die? Die and poison the earth like a plague victim, like so many pounds of lead?

Outside the trees were turning early, from the drought. The branches of the pines ended in brown nosegays of dead needles. They were cutting their losses. The maples and oaks sported branches already bronze, a dulled version of autumn color. The sky was a hazy buff blue, as if it were dusty for miles up. By nine o’clock, when they took her over to the other hospital, it was already hot for September.

They did not cut and shave her head until she was on the new ward. Valente had told Dr. Redding it upset the patients. The cold touch of the scissors nudged her nape, her ear with its shivery weight like a shark nosing past. With each clack of the blades, her hair fell from her, to lie like garbage on the floor. To be swept up and thrown away. No blackberry bushes would grow from her head’s shearing. Rich in nitrogen and trace elements: Luciente was always saying things like that. But Luciente was not with her this morning.

Sybil had stood at the door watching her go, her face working as she tried not to weep. In her mind now she could see Sybil’s auburn hair falling, the long beautiful hair of a fine natural red that varied strand to strand. Often she had brushed Sybil’s hair for her and always it amazed her how much yellow and brown and brass and carrot and chestnut there was in Sybil’s auburn hair, a spectrum of warm colors.

As they were shaving her head, she tried to think of Bee, whose massive well‑modeled head looked handsome that way. But she did not think she would look as strong and fine with her hair stolen. She had had no breakfast. They gave her a heavy sedative but they did not knock her out. They told her she would not really be conscious, but she was. She could hear the orderlies making jokes as they wheeled her to the operating room.

She had been prepared for any horror. Anything except boredom.

First Dr. Redding drilled on her skull. It did not hurt; it was merely horrifying. She could feel the pressure, she could feel the bone giving way, she could hear the drill entering. Then she saw them take up a needle to insert something. She did not understand what it was, because she felt nothing. They seemed to be waiting for it to take effect, whatever it was, and she waited too in gasping anxiety until she caught a reference to “radiopaque solution.” They were dyeing her and she was dying. The pun hung in her penetrated brain.

Next they fitted a machine over her, what they referred to as a stereotactic machine, and they pounded it into her head with three sharp metal pins as if she were a wall they were attaching a can opener to. Tap, tap, tap. They seemed to be figuring out at what point they were going to zero in, as they put it She felt faint and weird. She floated miles above her helpless body propped in green sheets and towels in a sort of operating chair, like a fancy dentist’s chair. They were using an x‑ray machine. They spoke of target structures and Dr. Redding boasted, “No more than a point‑five‑millimeter factor of error.”

Terror cut through the veils of the drug like a needle penetrating the bone supposed to protect her fragile spongy brain. How much of her was crammed into that space? Perhaps they could wipe out the memory of Claud by the slip of a needle. The brain was so dumb, not like the heart knocking on the breastbone loud and fluttery as a captured bird. It hid in its cage of bone, imagining itself safe.

She wanted to weep, to scream. But she was contained in a balloon way back up through her skull, perhaps floating out through the hole they had cut in her, floating out there above them, lighter than air. How patient they were to take so much of their valuable medical time deciding where to push in. How wonderful that they did not simply use a great big can opener and take off the top of her skull and scrape out the brains with a spoon. Some people ate brains.

“You could eat them. Fried,” she said suddenly.

Morgan’s eyes above the mask widened. “What did she say?”

“Something about eating,” the operating nurse said.

“Doubtless we stimulated an appetite center,” Dr. Redding said. “We’re down there. The higher you cauterize, the more you involve the intellectual faculties. I don’t think these patients have a lot to spare in that department. We’re after the centers of aggression, the primitive emotions run amok.”