you just didn’t see a reflection?”
“No,” I said. “He was out there. I know, I saw him….” Finally, I was able to tell Franco what I thought had happened.
At least he’d been familiar with my story, and was convinced that I wasn’t making this up, imagining it, or anything else. I started to cry, feeling besieged by so much I couldn’t control. Franco talked with one of the nurses and then came back, serious: Nolan had been shot in the chest, had lost a lot of blood, was in surgery. He called Brian for me—I hadn’t thought to leave a message on the machine—and I found an old T-shirt in my bag to change into.
As soon as Brian came into the room, I started crying again, nearly hysterical, trying to get to him. The look of horror on his face made me wonder what I looked like before I was cleaned up.
They wouldn’t tell me anything but that Nolan was in danger and they were working on him. Then they finally persuaded me to go home.
I couldn’t do much over the weekend besides sit in my home office and stare. Nolan was still in very bad shape: Franco had told me he heard the bullet had collapsed Nolan’s lung, and was lodged near his spinal cord. They weren’t certain that he was going to make it, and if he did, if he’d ever be the same again. He was partially paralyzed now.
The outside world seemed like too much to handle, but I couldn’t stand the way the pills the doctors gave me made me feel either. I couldn’t bear to leave my house. On Monday, classes started, and I called in, probably delighting my undergraduates and confusing my graduate students by having Meg hand them their syllabi before dismissing them. I emailed or called Brian about ten times in the day, eagerly watching the IM screen to see if he signed on; that way, I could see that he was at work and all right. I know he was doing the same.
The semester beginning was almost more than I could bear to think about. I couldn’t watch television or listen to the radio for fear I’d hear more about the shooting. I watched DVDs about factual CSI cases, not so much to feed my avocational interest, but more, it felt, to inoculate me against the idea of unexplained death.
Even the mailbox seemed an awfully long way away from the house now.
Jo called me Monday night, asked me how I was doing. “We’ve been really worried about you.”
“I’ve been better,” I said, then realized how churlish I sounded. “Sorry. Who’s we?”
“The rest of the class. Look, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now, but we’ve been calling around, and it seems that the consensus is that we’re going to keep meeting for our classes. Until, you know. Until Nolan gets back.”
If Nolan ever gets back, I felt like saying. “I think that’s fine. But I don’t know how I feel about it. I’m thinking of taking a break, that is. I feel awful about what happened, and I don’t think I can face everyone.”
There was a long pause at the other end. “Em, it’s not like you were responsible or anything, you know. If there was anything more that could have been done, we all know you would have. From what I hear from the aerobiqueens, you did everything just right, got someone to call the ambulance, stayed with him…”
I couldn’t tell Jo what I knew and hated myself for, that the bullets were for Nolan, because of me. Why else had there been the false phone message? He’d been shot because of his connection with me. She didn’t know the whole story, and I wasn’t going to tell her now. Too many people thought I was nutty as it was. “Maybe.”
“Sure. Look, no pressure, okay? You’ve been through a lot. But you know working out will make you feel better, and the advanced people will help the newbies. And, well, you know we’re there for you.”
I felt my eyes fill up at “newbies”—it was a word that she’d gotten from Nolan. There she went again, laying a surprise move on me. But hell, my eyes filled seeing the cats playing, these days. “Okay, I’ll give it a try,” I said, already half planning to forget all about it. “Regular meeting times? Classes and drop-ins?”
“Yep, we already squared it with the gym management. See you then.” She hung up before