To Feel Stuff (29 page)

“What's wrong with me?” asked the “apparition.”

As E studied him, it became clear to her that he was no longer in ghostly form. As E put it, “It dawned on me that his head was blocking the wall behind him. It was a solid head.” E understood that she was face to face with a living, breathing human being.

For the past seven months, E had been communing with a character in her imminent life who had been waiting for her to catch up. This option had not even occurred to either of us, since we had been convinced that the young man was dead.

Why hadn't we considered the option? After all, at E's birth, A had proclaimed that she would possess foresight because of her caul. I can only hazard the guess that E, fearing the development of this ability, did her best to discount it, and I subconsciously followed her lead. Although she had never been happy about the prospect of being able to see ghosts, I believe having access to the past was a less threatening alternative for her. While she might be inconvenienced by the presence (and requests) of the dead, she could still take comfort in the slight separation between their lives. To put it most simply, the relationship would be of a therapeutic nature. E would have license, just as a professional therapist does, to separate the problems of the deceased from her own.

Second sight, however, brought with it not only greater responsibility, but greater confinement. I believe that, for E, the gift of the prophecy would mean a tight cocoon of repetition, in which she would be forced to know everything before it reached her. She would be, so to speak, a ghost inside her own future.

Once, A had told E that if she should ever come into her abilities, she would fall in love with how many mysteries there were in the world. However, what E had dreaded was the opposite. She feared that when she began to see what others couldn't, there would be no mysteries left.

When she realized that the apparition was flesh and blood before her, E later reported, she had thought to herself, “My life is over.” She felt instantly devastated by a locked conception of the future and confessed that the idea of suicide had flashed through her mind.

But, just as E began to feel herself in total service to inevitability, there was one detail that snapped her back to the present.

She realized she had yet to answer the new patient.

E knew that during their last meeting, she had accused him of being dead and questioned him about how he had gotten that way. Now, however, the patient was clearly very much alive, which meant that her former comments no longer made sense. The context had altered.

With this discovery, E described herself as feeling adrift. This feeling is what suddenly filled her with, in her own words, “immense gratitude.” It occurred to E that no matter what she foresaw, she would never understand what her role was to be until the actual moment arrived.

Her abilities had left her a loophole: she was excised from her own visions. Within the next few months, E would confirm that this was true.

At the hallway desk, E held out her tape recorder and instructed me to listen.

I heard the patient ask, “What's wrong with me?” I felt chills hearing his voice for the first time.

Then E responded. “Nothing's wrong with you. Well, something's wrong with you because you're here in the infirmary. But here's what's wrong with me. I'm in the midst of a very bad time. My first love just left me this morning. It's become obvious that I'm not leaving here anytime soon. Painfully obvious, meaning that I have much literal pain. It's almost transfusion day again. Also, I'm under the inescapable impression that I have supernatural powers, can see the future, and knew you were coming.

“But beyond that, I don't have much to say right now. So you talk. Even if you think I'm psychotic, please talk. I think I'll be fine in awhile.”

E told me that the patient appeared completely unfazed by her speech, and he walked toward her, just as he had before. Once again, he paused about two feet from where she was and slumped down, his knees bent. He hung his long arms over them.

As he stared at her and she stared back at him, E noticed the subtleties in his expression. She saw an unusual acceptance of what she had just said. She saw amusement, but not “the negative kind.” She thought also that she could see a certain measure of patience.

“Please tell me a story,” E said. “Tell me why you're in this hallway.” She wanted to hear it all again, wanted to experience it anew.

“The reason I'm here is probably supposed to be embarrassing,” the patient said, “but I don't feel embarrassed about it. Are you easily offended?”

“No.”

E clicked off the recorder and looked up at me with the face of a child. “Can you believe it?” she asked. I told her no, and then I told her yes.

“Can I see him?” I asked.

“He's supposed to be testing in the dark because of his tetanus, so I finally got him to do that.” E and I walked toward the infirmary door. I felt boyish again, but I suppose that all personal breakthroughs hurtle us back toward our youths, to a time when we were just beginning to figure out the nature of things. Quietly, E placed her hand on the knob and turned.

From over her shoulder I peered into the dimmed infirmary. The shades were drawn, the room shapeless. When my eyes began to adjust to the dark, I could make out a figure lying in the third bed from the left. His features became more and more defined as more seconds passed, and soon I was looking at a face that I already knew from the artist's rendering. My breath caught in my chest and felt too powerful for the cavity to hold it.

“I told him as much as I could,” E said about the new patient. He turned his head toward her, now aware that we'd entered the room. I was aware of the crackling of the pillowcase—of, as E had said, “a solid head.”

“Hey,” the patient said, smiling in the endearing manner that E had often described.

“It is remarkable to meet you,” I responded, letting the door go. I will confess my feeling upon entering that room. I am not proud of it, but it was jealousy. It was not romantic jealousy, as E and I were doctor and patient, nothing more. While I suspected that she and the patient were at the beginning of an intimate friendship, this was not what disturbed me. Instead, it was the jealousy that occurs when a secret, something shared, expands its borders to another person. E and I had been bound together under the same secret for such a long time that I could not help but feel a sense of loss when the source of that secret became independent, touchable, real outside of me.

Nonetheless, I battled my feeling and took a seat. That day, we occupied the first three beds, and we spoke until the darkness was so heavy that we could not make each other out anymore.

Thank you to:

 

Amy Hempel, Ann Patty, the other four members of the Bennington Five (especially Hannah Pfeifle) + Kate Milliken, Cressida Connolly, David Hough, David Mead, Doug Stewart, Jodie Hockensmith, Jody Hotchkiss, the Houghtons (especially Audrey), Kay Kurashige, Kim Lash, John Nguyen, the Litwacks, my family, Nick Dalton, Philo Farnsworth, Sean Daily, Sheila Kohler, Sloane Miller, and Spack.

A
NDREA
S
EIGEL
is the author of
Like the Red Panda
. Twenty-six years old, she's currently working on her MFA from Bennington College and lives in Los Angeles.

 

www.andreaseigel.com.