back. Don’t go, she wanted to say, but she was too tired to say it.
* * *
—
When she next woke, her son, Christopher, was sitting by her bed. “Christopher?” she said.
“Mom.” He put his hands in front of his face. “Oh, Mommy,” he said, “you scared me to death.”
This was more confusing to Olive than anything that had happened so far. “Are you real?” she asked.
Her son’s hands came away from his face. “Oh, Mommy, say something else. Oh please don’t have lost your mind!”
For a few moments Olive was silent; she had to gather her thoughts. Then she said, “Hello, Chris. I haven’t lost my mind at all. I’ve—apparently—had a heart attack, and you have—apparently—come to see me.” When he didn’t say anything, she demanded, “Well? Did I get it right?”
Her son nodded. “But you scared me, Mom. They said you were swearing. And I thought, Oh God, she was swearing? Then she’s gone absolutely dippy, and I thought, I’d rather she be dead than dippy.”
“I was swearing?” Olive asked. “What kind of swearing?”
“I don’t know, Mom. But they got a kick out of it. When I asked, they just laughed and wouldn’t tell me, just that you were really angry.”
Olive considered this. Her son’s face seemed quite old to her. She said, “Well, never mind. I was someplace gorgeous, Chris, and then they brought me back here and I guess I was mad, I don’t remember, but ask me anything and I’ll show you I’m not dippy. God, I hope to hell I’m not dippy.”
“No, you sound better. You sound like yourself. Mom, they said you were dead.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” Olive said. “I think that’s awful interesting.”
* * *
Dr. Rabolinski held her hand when he spoke to her; she did not remember that he had done that before. But his hand was smooth and yet a man’s hand, and he held her hand in both of his, or sometimes just one of his hands would hold one of hers as he spoke to her. He had glasses that were fairly thick, yet she could see his eyes behind them; dark and penetrating, they looked at her as he spoke, holding her hand. She was a strong woman, he said, and gave her hand a little squeeze. She’d had a stent put into her artery, he said. She had been intubated; Olive did not know what that meant, and she did not ask. He told her again that she had had a heart attack in the driveway of the woman who cut her hair. She had fallen forward onto her car horn, so the woman came right out and called 911 immediately, and this was why Olive was alive, even though she had had no pulse when they came to get her. But they had brought her back to life.
Looking into Dr. Rabolinski’s eyes while he held her hand, Olive said thoughtfully, “Well, I don’t know if that was such a good idea.”
The man sighed. He shook his head slowly. “What can I say,” he said, sadly.
“Nothing,” she said. “Nothing to say to that.”
She had fallen in love with him.
* * *
Olive stayed on in the ICU unit; pneumonia arrived because of the intubation. These were days when she knew very little of what was happening to her, she had the sense that she was a huge chunk of smelly cheese and every so often someone seemed to mop her up, turning her one way, then the other. She drifted in and out of sleep, and then she seemed to not be able to sleep at all. A deep sadness gripped her, and she could only stare at the ceiling, or try to talk to Christopher—who showed up, she thought, quite a lot—sitting by her bed, talking to her, sometimes looking so anxious that she wanted to say, “Please go now,” but she didn’t say it, she was old and tired and her son was there to be with her. It seemed to her to be one of the few times in her life when she didn’t say what she thought. But when he wasn’t there her sadness deepened, and she understood after a while that she was probably not going to die, but that her life would be very different.
She said this quietly to Dr. Rabolinski when he came to see her and sat on the bed and held her hand. “Your life is going to be very much what it used to be,” he said