Lars and Tony were on stretchers next to each other. Tony’s head lolled to one side, his feet splayed in a V shape. Meanwhile, Lars’s profile looked like that of a Grecian god and his feet were neatly crossed at the ankles, as if he were napping on a train while listening to a podcast.
Ben and Jessica were in a corner of the room kissing like young lovers who have just discovered kissing and have all the time in the world. Their hands moved over each other’s bodies with slow passionate reverence.
“Goodness,” said Frances. “That looks like fun.”
She continued to survey the room.
Carmel lay on her stretcher, her thick black hair spread like seaweed around her head. She held up her hands and wiggled her fingers as if she were trying to see them through her eye mask.
Napoleon, Heather, and Zoe sat in a row with their backs against the wall, like young travelers stranded at an airport. There was a boy sitting in front of them. He stuck his finger up at Zoe.
“Who is that boy?” said Frances. “The boy without the shirt?”
“There is no boy,” said Delilah. She reached for Frances’s headphones.
“He’s laughing,” said Frances. She tried and failed to grab at Delilah’s arm to stop her pulling the eye mask back over her eyes. “I think I’ll go say hello.”
“Stay with me, Frances,” said Delilah.
40
Heather
Heather focused on her breathing. She was determined to keep a tiny part of her brain safe and sober and in charge of monitoring the effects of the psilocybin and LSD; one brightly lit office window in a dark office tower.
She knew, for example, that in reality her son rotted beneath the earth; he was not really there with them. And yet he seemed so real, and when she reached out to touch his arm, it was his flesh: firm and smooth and tanned. He tanned easily and he was hopeless about putting on sunscreen, even though she nagged.
“Don’t go, Zach.” Napoleon jerked upright and reached out his hands.
“He’s not going, Dad,” said Zoe. She pointed. “He’s still right there.”
“My boy,” sobbed Napoleon. His body convulsed. “He’s gone.” His sobs were guttural, uncontrolled. “My boy, my boy, my boy.”
“Stop that,” said Heather. This was not the place, not the time.
It was the drugs. Not everyone reacted the same way to drugs. Some laboring mothers got plastered on just one whiff of nitrous oxide. Others screamed at Heather that it wasn’t working.
Napoleon had always been susceptible. He couldn’t even cope with coffee. One long black and you’d think he’d taken speed. An over-the-counter painkiller could send him loopy. The only time he ever had a general anesthetic, which was for a knee reconstruction the year before Zach died, he’d had a bad reaction when he came out of it and scared a poor young nurse to death by supposedly “speaking in tongues” about the Garden of Eden, although it wasn’t clear how she understood what he was saying if he was speaking in tongues. “She must be fluent in tongues,” Zach had said, and Zoe had laughed so much, and there was no greater pleasure in Heather’s life than watching her children make each other laugh.
Watch your husband, she thought. Monitor him. She narrowed her eyes and clenched her jaw to maintain focus, but she felt herself drift hopelessly, inevitably away on a sea of memories.
She is walking down the street pushing her two babies in a big double stroller and every single old lady stops to make a comment and Heather is never going to make it to the shops.
She is a little girl staring at her mother’s stomach wishing she could make a baby grow in there so that she can have a brother or sister but the wishing doesn’t work, wishing never works, and when she grows up she will never have an only child, a lonely only.
She is opening the door of her son’s bedroom because she’s going to do a load of washing and she may as well scrape up some of the layer of clothes on his floor and her whole body resists what she is seeing and she thinks, I’m doing a load of washing, don’t do this, Zach, I want to do laundry, I want to keep this life, please, please let me keep this life, but she hears herself screaming because she knows it’s too late, there is nothing to be done, the life of