Heart the Lover (37)

The room is large and full of people, all men. Eight or ten of them in chairs, a few others standing, all staring at the TV suspended on the far wall. Something happens and they yell at the TV all at once. A few jump to their feet. Yash is in the center, tilted upright in bed, wearing a Georgia Bulldogs cap with the tag still on and yelling with the rest of them.

He’s the only one who sees me come in. His face lights up like it used to. Then he sees me take in the oxygen cannula and the IV bags and the Foley catheter coming off the side of his bed, and he remembers where we are and looks at me apologetically.

He holds out his hand and I take it. I take Yash’s hand.

‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

‘Of course I came.’

‘But Jack.’

‘He’s fine.’

I bend over and hug him gently, not wanting to displace anything. His mother shoos one of the guys out of a chair and drags it over to me. She glides my suitcase into the corner.

‘You sit right here beside him, hon.’



I sit. Yash takes both my hands in his. We haven’t touched in this way since Paris. There’s another eruption of hollering at the TV.

‘It’s March Madness.’ His whole face is alight again. ‘Isn’t this amazing?’

I’m having trouble finding my voice. ‘It’s great,’ I say. There’s so much noise he can’t hear how wobbly it is. ‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m good.’ He squeezes my hand again. ‘I’m so good. You’re here. Everyone’s here.’

I force myself to look around the room, to identify Sam. Would he speak to me? Would I speak to him? None of the men in the room seems to be him. Brent and Arlo and Yash’s Uncle Percy greet me with quick hugs during a break in play for a foul shot. Brent takes a call and leaves the room, finger in his other ear.

‘You missed Bean. He was here this morning. He’ll be back, though. Isn’t this amazing?’ Yash says again, glancing around the chaos of the room. ‘You see that, Jimmy? I told you. Nothing but bricks from that guy.’

Jimmy agrees.

Yash turns back to me. ‘Can you believe this? All these people. I feel so blessed.’

I look at the place where the PICC line goes under the skin on his chest. I wonder how much morphine they’re giving him. ‘Blessed’ is not a word I’ve ever heard Yash use.



‘Do you have a date yet, for the surgery?’

I don’t remember telling him about this. That he is capable of recalling it, having concern about it, makes my throat ache. I shake my head.

‘You should be home with your family.’

‘I should be right here.’ This feels more true than I thought it would.

We squeeze our hands tight and look at each other for a long time without speaking, as if this were all normal, this open raw affection between us.

Yash’s mom comes in and hands me a cup of tea. ‘Do you remember my sister Sue?’ She pulls in Yash’s aunt, looking just as I left her in Knoxville, from the doorway.

‘Of course. I also remember the best piece of pecan pie in my life.’ I stand and give her a hug. I offer her my chair.

She waves it away. ‘You sit. You’re the guest of honor.’

‘I’m not. I’m an interloper.’ I point to the chair again.

She smiles and shakes her head. ‘Thank you for being here.’ Her eyes shimmer. ‘We’ll talk later.’

They go back out into the hallway. Yash reaches for my hands.

‘Why is everyone being so nice to me?’ I ask.

He doesn’t answer because someone has scored a three-pointer to tie it up.



A nurse comes in, to shush everyone, I assume. Instead, she just weaves between all the guys standing and sitting and reaches Yash’s other side and swaps out a bag from the IV pole and punches some buttons and adjusts his cannula. She taps a long white fingernail on the oxygen number on the vitals monitor.

‘Deep breaths or we’ll have to get out the mask.’

He sucks in hard and the numbers go higher.

‘Good boy.’ She looks at me. ‘We want him in the nineties, okay?’

I nod and she leaves and Yash takes my hand again and stares at me.

He was never a handholder or an eye-gazer. But somehow it is not uncomfortable.

‘I’m so happy, Hink,’ he says. ‘I’ve missed you so much.’

We didn’t stay in touch after his visit to Maine. Or I didn’t. He sent us a thank-you note. He wrote me a letter or two. Maybe more. Things blur after Jack got sick. About a year ago, he called and told me he had cancer. Jack was recovering from his third surgery. We talked a lot that spring and summer. I put him in touch with Jack’s oncologist, who recommended someone in Atlanta. Yash had chemo, radiation, then he was placed in a clinical trial and the tumors in his lungs started shrinking. Within a few months one disappeared entirely. He texted me a listing for a small house outside of Atlanta. Below it he wrote, This worker bee just bought a house!

That fall I was invited to Boston University to give an evening reading and visit the graduate fiction workshop beforehand. The workshop was taught by the writer Ray Hart. ‘The Last Fall’ had been Ray Hart’s first story to appear in print. Since then, he’d published two perfect novels, twelve years apart. The first I’d read in Phoenix, when I was living with my mother. I wasn’t writing then, but when I finished it I told my mother that I was going to write a novel. I keep that book on my desk at all times, to remember that feeling. I’d stopped traveling for work, stopped accepting any kind of invitation years ago, but this wasn’t far and I had to go meet Ray Hart.