“No, no, he couldn’t have done that.” But there was hesitation in Julia’s voice now.
“You thought the history department was wrong too, about him missing classes. Julia, this is real. This is happening.”
Julia was quiet at the other end of the phone. Sylvie felt terrible in every part of her body. Terrible for her sister, terrible for William. “Just please,” she said, “find a cab and come here. I’ll call Emeline too, and she can meet us here to watch Alice.”
“He left me,” Julia said, in a slow voice. “He was very clear. He wouldn’t want me there.”
Sylvie stared at the foggy plastic wall that lined the booth. She was facing the seating area, and nearby there was an older man sitting with his head in his hands. Next to him, a woman wearing sunglasses stood with her arms crossed over her chest. Even if she hadn’t known where they were, Sylvie would have known they were waiting for bad news.
She said, “You’re not going to come?”
“He has Kent. Kent will take good care of him.” Julia cleared her throat and then said, “I need you, Sylvie. Please come back to the apartment.”
Sylvie opened her mouth to speak. She felt like a collection of rusty hinges: her jaw, every joint in her body. She said, “Let me wrap things up here first.” She returned the receiver to the cradle and then stood in the booth until a man knocked on the glass to indicate that he needed to make a call.
She had no trouble finding Kent in the waiting room. He and his friends occupied seats in the far corner. They looked like what they were: a basketball team that had waded into a lake. Everyone else in the waiting room seemed to have chosen seats as far away from the team as possible.
“The doctor won’t speak to us,” Kent said. “You need to go to the desk and ask if you can sit with William until Julia gets here. I don’t want him to be alone.”
“She’s not coming.”
Kent gave her a sharp look. “At all?”
“Not now. I don’t know.”
Kent closed his eyes for a second, then said, “Fine. The ambulance driver thought you were his wife—tell the lady at the desk the same thing so they let you in. And when you talk to the doctor, make sure William is not only being looked at physically but has a psychiatric consult.”
She thought, Tell Kent you have to leave. Tell him your sister needs you. She said, “You’re in medical school. Shouldn’t you go?”
Kent shook his head. “Only family allowed. I can’t pretend to be related to him.”
Tears filled Sylvie’s eyes, though she couldn’t have guessed what she was feeling, because it felt like everything. She nodded at Kent and walked to the desk.
She said, “I’m William Waters’s wife,” and the nurse led her through a door and then down two hallways, past open doors that showed men, women, and children in various urgent states: crying, bleeding, unconscious. Sylvie felt increasingly unwell herself. Her clothes rubbed against her skin. The blister on her heel stung with each step she took.
The nurse stopped and pointed to a doorway. Sylvie walked through it, alone. William was lying on a bed. His eyes were closed. His feet were covered by a blanket, but they hung off the too-short bed. With William spread out in front of her, Sylvie could see that his skin looked wrong. Extra pale, and somehow stretched. Like he had been inflated and was now returning to his normal size. The nurses had taken away his wet clothes; he was wearing a hospital gown, and his arm was hooked up to an IV. This was the first time Sylvie had been alone with him since the night on the bench, six months earlier.
“I thought you were dead,” she whispered.
There was one window in the room, which had a view of a green leafy tree. The childbirth floor was above this one and on the other side of the huge building. That was where Sylvie had been before, where her nieces were born, and where her father died. There was a hard chair next to the bed, so she sat on it.
Sylvie closed her aching eyes. She was aware of a sensation inside herself—a pattering, like light rain—and, slowly, she realized it was relief. She was relieved. She was relieved that William was alive, in front of her. And she was relieved to be the person in this chair, in this room. When she’d spoken to Julia on the phone, Sylvie had been focused on what was supposed to happen—a sick man’s wife was supposed to come to his bedside—but it was better for William to be with her. Sylvie could trace the dots that had led him to this room; she’d known, somehow, that this wasn’t impossible. With her eyes closed, Sylvie could imagine William walking into the lake, feeling like a tablespoon of water that could no longer stay on a spoon. There had been no more gravity holding him together, and so he’d tried to dissolve into the giant body of water. Sylvie sat at his bedside, loose inside her own skin, so she could share some of her strength with him while he slept.
William
August 1983–November 1983
He walked the city for most of the night and then returned to the shore of the lake. It was still dark out. No one was around, and even the air was motionless as he waded into the water. No birdsong, no traffic noise behind him, no human voices. It felt like the world had paused. William had to walk for a long time before the water was deep enough to go over his head. He hadn’t thought to bring any weighted objects; he’d stopped thinking hours earlier. William contained only a yearning for water, for darkness, for quiet. He wanted to sink, but his giant body kept trying to float. Even after a long time in the water, when he was pretty out of it, his feet would shoot sideways, and he would be on his back, as buoyant as any boat, staring up at the sun. He was no longer a person with a name and a history; at that point, he was a cork bobbing in liquid, and he could only note the soft, pruned feeling of his hands, the sun burning his face, the water making its way into his eyes and ears. He was sleeping, or unconscious, when there was a roaring noise, and voices, and hands tugging at him. He couldn’t open his eyes to see what was happening. He listened—heard Kent call his name after a time—but only because he had no choice. When he woke up in the hospital, dry, and saw Sylvie on a chair next to him, his first thought was that he’d failed. The fact that he had failed meant he had to continue to walk forward with his life history—his mistakes—slung over his shoulders like a heavy backpack. This fact exhausted him, but he was too tired to reject it.
* * *
—
William was in a different hospital from the one he had first woken up in; after nearly a week of evaluation, he had been moved to an inpatient psychiatric facility in downtown Chicago. The lake was three blocks away, out of sight. William was aware of the body of water, though, despite the distance. While he drifted in and out of sleep, he still felt soaking wet, far from shore, and unable to stay underwater.
During the first few days at the new hospital, either Sylvie or Kent was always in the room when he shifted in and out of sleep. He saw them but wasn’t strong enough to speak. Kent spoke to him, told him he was going to get better, told him his doctors were excellent, finally told him he had to return to school but would be back in a few days. Sylvie rarely said anything, just sat in the room’s one chair and read her book.