life ahead at the first physiological inkling of disaster.
Jolene Jansen’s heart should have been racing when her body plunged out of the controlled and level plane of anesthesia into the strangling spiral of anaphylaxis. Her heart rate should have sped up before terminal oxygen deprivation checked it. Something was wrong with her heart. Something was wrong with Jolene’s heart even before I put her to sleep.
I rest the tips of my fingers against my carotid artery and count my pulse as it slows down from one hundred to ninety to seventy to sixty. Outside I hear the last of the revelers leaving Pioneer Square as the street transforms from night to day, from bars to businesses. Circling red lights on my ceiling reflect the city’s sweep to bustle drunks off to emergency rooms or jails before the Starbucks and French patisseries open. In another two hours, pale-skinned baristas clothed all in black, silver rings ladder-stepping up the curves of their ears, will begin picking their way through the broken glass and oil-sheened puddles to turn on their espresso machines. It has been thirty-two days since Jolene’s autopsy, and the report is still not back. I creep down the hallway in my nightgown, padding on tiptoe as if there were anyone else here to awaken. My alarm is set for five. I have an hour to begin reading about congenital heart defects.
Karen Leece, one of the gynecologists, pages me during my first case to say she has an extra ticket to the symphony at Benaroya Hall tonight. Her husband, Rick, travels a lot as a manager for Alaska Airlines, and she often adopts me as her spare date.
“There’ll be eight of us—Glenn and his wife from my old practice, and some of Rick’s colleagues. We’re coming back to my house after for a drink. Please come, Marie—it’s Ravel. We’d all love to see you getting out again.” There is a brief moment of awkwardness as she realizes where she has trod.
The thought of making small talk with strangers feels ludicrous. But she’s right, I’ve cloistered myself since Jolene’s death. So I accept.
Benaroya Hall’s arcing glass wall fractures into glistening panels that rise three stories above the symphony patrons. Karen meets me at the front entrance with my ticket just before the auditorium lights go down so I won’t have to socialize until after the concert.
“Do I look OK?” I ask her. I threw on a gauzy summer dress just before the taxi came, and couldn’t find the right shoes.
Karen kisses my cheek and guides me past the usher with an arm around my waist. “Gorgeous. Are you eating anymore? Your belt is slipping off. How come I only gain when I’m stressed?”
There is a swell of applause, and the pianist bows and sweeps the tails of his coat over the piano bench. Notes gather and swirl into imagined shapes; Ravel’s minor chords and runs stir a communion of unresolved pathos that cuts to my core. We are two thousand strangers revering music composed almost a century ago, discovering emotion evoked through vibrations of air. I close my eyes and let the piano crescendos wash over me, penetrate me, sweep me into a universe where these last weeks of my life could dissolve into inconsequential bits of fallen stars.
After the concert we share cars to Karen and Rick’s house in Madison Park, a boxy glass and stucco structure plunked between two pastel Victorian-style mansions, its front porch overhung with evergreen clematis, the fading white blossoms fluttering like small ghosts against the dark leaves. Karen pops some fancy hors d’oeuvres out of the Sub-Zero refrigerator and pours champagne into gold-rimmed flutes. Glenn builds a fire of pressed-wax logs, unnaturally colored flames incinerate the paper on the fake wood, and we pull armchairs and kitchen stools around a pink marble coffee table. I’m hungrier than I’ve felt in days, and the champagne feels like it’s untangling something inside me.
Louis, one of Rick’s trainees, and his wife,
Jolene Jansen’s heart should have been racing when her body plunged out of the controlled and level plane of anesthesia into the strangling spiral of anaphylaxis. Her heart rate should have sped up before terminal oxygen deprivation checked it. Something was wrong with her heart. Something was wrong with Jolene’s heart even before I put her to sleep.
I rest the tips of my fingers against my carotid artery and count my pulse as it slows down from one hundred to ninety to seventy to sixty. Outside I hear the last of the revelers leaving Pioneer Square as the street transforms from night to day, from bars to businesses. Circling red lights on my ceiling reflect the city’s sweep to bustle drunks off to emergency rooms or jails before the Starbucks and French patisseries open. In another two hours, pale-skinned baristas clothed all in black, silver rings ladder-stepping up the curves of their ears, will begin picking their way through the broken glass and oil-sheened puddles to turn on their espresso machines. It has been thirty-two days since Jolene’s autopsy, and the report is still not back. I creep down the hallway in my nightgown, padding on tiptoe as if there were anyone else here to awaken. My alarm is set for five. I have an hour to begin reading about congenital heart defects.
Karen Leece, one of the gynecologists, pages me during my first case to say she has an extra ticket to the symphony at Benaroya Hall tonight. Her husband, Rick, travels a lot as a manager for Alaska Airlines, and she often adopts me as her spare date.
“There’ll be eight of us—Glenn and his wife from my old practice, and some of Rick’s colleagues. We’re coming back to my house after for a drink. Please come, Marie—it’s Ravel. We’d all love to see you getting out again.” There is a brief moment of awkwardness as she realizes where she has trod.
The thought of making small talk with strangers feels ludicrous. But she’s right, I’ve cloistered myself since Jolene’s death. So I accept.
Benaroya Hall’s arcing glass wall fractures into glistening panels that rise three stories above the symphony patrons. Karen meets me at the front entrance with my ticket just before the auditorium lights go down so I won’t have to socialize until after the concert.
“Do I look OK?” I ask her. I threw on a gauzy summer dress just before the taxi came, and couldn’t find the right shoes.
Karen kisses my cheek and guides me past the usher with an arm around my waist. “Gorgeous. Are you eating anymore? Your belt is slipping off. How come I only gain when I’m stressed?”
There is a swell of applause, and the pianist bows and sweeps the tails of his coat over the piano bench. Notes gather and swirl into imagined shapes; Ravel’s minor chords and runs stir a communion of unresolved pathos that cuts to my core. We are two thousand strangers revering music composed almost a century ago, discovering emotion evoked through vibrations of air. I close my eyes and let the piano crescendos wash over me, penetrate me, sweep me into a universe where these last weeks of my life could dissolve into inconsequential bits of fallen stars.
After the concert we share cars to Karen and Rick’s house in Madison Park, a boxy glass and stucco structure plunked between two pastel Victorian-style mansions, its front porch overhung with evergreen clematis, the fading white blossoms fluttering like small ghosts against the dark leaves. Karen pops some fancy hors d’oeuvres out of the Sub-Zero refrigerator and pours champagne into gold-rimmed flutes. Glenn builds a fire of pressed-wax logs, unnaturally colored flames incinerate the paper on the fake wood, and we pull armchairs and kitchen stools around a pink marble coffee table. I’m hungrier than I’ve felt in days, and the champagne feels like it’s untangling something inside me.
Louis, one of Rick’s trainees, and his wife,
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