Specimen Days by Michael Cunningham Page B

Catherine Fitzhugh, at the Mannahatta Company. Tell her I've been hurt."
    In the hospital, a man stood crying. He was dressed for his work, in a butcher's apron smeared with animals' blood. His affliction was uncertain. He appeared to be whole. He stood with grave formality, as a singer might stand on a stage.
    Around him were the others. They sat in what chairs there were. They sat or lay on the floor. There were men, some old and some not yet old, wounded in ways that could be seen (one bled extravagantly from a gash in his forehead, another tenderly stroked his mangled leg) and in ways that could not. There were women who sat quietly, as if whatever sickness had brought them here were as ordinary as sitting in their parlors; one of them, in a tobacco-colored kerchief, coughed demurely, a sound like paper tearing, and leaned forward now and again to spit on the floor between her feet. A man and a woman and a child huddled together on the floor, rocking and moaning as if they shared an injury among them. There was the smell of sweat and other humors mixed with ammonia, as if humanness itself had been made into medicine.
    Sisters in black habits and a doctor in white no, there were two doctors hurried among those who waited. Sometimes a name was called, and one of the people rose and went away. The man went on standing in the room's center, crying with a low, unwavering insistence. He was the waiting room's host, as Mr. Cain was the host of Lucas's block, its wounded and inspired angel.
    Lucas sat on the floor with his back against the wall. Dan stood over him. Pain was a hot, brilliant whiteness that suffused Lucas's body and bled into the air around him. Lucas held in his lap the bundle that was his hand, wrapped in rags soaked through with blood. Pain originated in his hand but filled him as fire fills a room with heat and light. He made no sound. He had gone too far away to speak or cry. Pain was in him like the book or the works. He had always been here, waiting in this room.
    He leaned his shoulder against Dan's leg. Dan reached down and stroked his hair with the fingers he had left.
    Lucas couldn't tell how much time had passed. Time in the waiting room was like time in his parents' bedroom and time at the works. It passed in its own way; it couldn't be measured. After a span of time had passed, Catherine came. She walked into the room in her blue dress, alive and unharmed. She stood at the entrance, searching.
    Lucas's heart banged hotly against his ribs. It hurt him, as if his heart were an ember, harmless when it hung in the bell of his chest but painful when it touched bone. He said, Catherine, but couldn't be sure if he had actually spoken. He made to rise but couldn't.
    She saw him. She came and knelt before him. She said, "Are you all right?"
    He nodded. Tears sprang unbidden to his eyes. He had an urge to conceal his hand from her, as if he had done something shameful; as if, seeing his hand, she would know some final secret about him.
    Catherine looked up at Dan. She said, "Why is he still out here?"
    "They told us to wait," Dan answered. "We'll see about that."
    Catherine rose. Lucas could hear the rustle of her dress. She went among the others, stepping around them. She stood near the crying man until a sister passed, carrying something on a tray, something that had made a red stain on the cloth that covered it. Catherine spoke to the sister. Lucas couldn't hear what she said. The sister replied and walked away.
    Catherine returned. She bent over, put her face close to Lucas's. She said, "Are you in much pain?"
    He shook his head. It was true and not true. He had entered pain. He had become it.
    She said to Dan, "He's still bleeding." Dan nodded. It would be foolish to deny it. "How long have you been here?" she asked. "I don't know," Dan said.
    Catherine made her stern face. For a moment, Lucas felt as if he had come home, as if the hospital were where he lived.
    A doctor, one of the doctors, came out of the