Impuls

After half an hour, the thought crosses her mind that dying of tuberculosis, pneumonia, or the flu would not be very productive.

The window is slammed shut.

The kettle is put on, boiled, cooled, put back on; the bedding is changed twice a day; dust disappears from the windowsill, settles on the floor; creaky wood is washed, blinds are wiped, cleaning products are smelled.

Emily is dreaming.

Legions of shadows, a cloud thickening in the silence of the hospital corridors, whispering and beckoning after them – to the wards, to the tiny personal Underworlds, where the leaden fog of pharmacon strikes the sick head.

Hands are tied with a thin needle crudely thrust into a vein; tubes and fluid envelope the body. The hinges on the doors creak.

Clark dances – barefoot, with flowers embedded in the empty ovals of her eye sockets, smiling, moving, approaching Emily, and a wry mockery distorts her face.

What have you become, Johnson?

I wouldn't leave anyway.

Emily jerks her body up in bed – there's still a gray monochrome square of sky outside the window – and, rising to her feet in a split second, goes to put the kettle on.

It's starting to rain.

She has nothing to do – no work to look for, and she is frankly afraid to spend money; so once again she climbs under the covers and sinks into a half-slumber. There, in her head, she has another life, imagined, perfect – a white coat, a restaurant for Friday night, a personal secretary.

She imagines it all so vividly that she even moves her hands, imagining she is holding a scalpel. A conductor without an orchestra. A violinist without a violin.

Clark is added to another life, too. Thoughts bounce, bounce, bounce; how about dinner together, Lorraine? My treat. Let's celebrate the operation, we did a great job. Why don't we bring Charlie? He's a smart guy, isn't he? Why don't I give you a ride home, since your Cooper's in the shop? Let's go for a drive around London in the evening. Another cup of coffee, and then we'll be off.

The warm touch of a spider's long fingers on my wrist.

You can't ignore me.

Loneliness is eating me alive.

* * *

Nothing in the world would outweigh her importance on the scale.

Emily walks in circles around Royal London Hospital; the familiar, jagged, automated route, the planes on the windows, Mr. Connors in the reflections, the tinkling bells and yellow lights.

She doesn't know why she's doing this, but at seven in the morning she stands outside the coffee shop and waits.

It's been an hour. Or maybe two.

Lorraine swaps her parka for a long coat; Charlie swaps her glasses for lenses; Lorraine purses her lips, ordering black; Charlie asks for more syrup in her milk.

Emily presses the back of her head against the glass and closes her eyes, imagining that now she too will order her coffee and run to work afterwards.

They're so close you can hear them talking: the neurosurgeon curses the bitter cold, Charlie complains about the traffic downtown; he says it's nice to live on Queen Anne, it's always quiet and peaceful; and Lorraine purses her lips: Oswin is nice, too, and it's obviously closer; or do you want to live like Moss, in Belgravia? And have thirty women bring you breakfast in bed?

And take half your paycheck, Charlie laughs.

Clark smiles.

Emily counts her steps.

* * *

Believes: magic has already happened once, so why shouldn't it happen again; yes, she has forbidden it, renounced it, cursed it; but who knows, maybe at least one more time a miracle will happen…?

So every day she walks in circles around the damn hospital, afraid to go inside; every time she leans her forehead against the cold glass in the coffee shop; and every three days she buys the cheapest coffee – just to sit there for a few hours, at the end of which another airplane of hope takes off.

Sometimes she buys a newspaper with job ads – and pokes around like a blind kitten, calling, asking; rejection, rejection, rejection. It is as if she has been blacklisted, branded, cut out of life; it is as if she has become invisible again, and her foil reflecting the light has grown into her skin; and Emily does not have the courage to go to work in another direction, even if the coffee shop on her street corner has an opening for a waitress.

She doesn't know how to do otherwise.

It gets harder every day; the money she has left runs out too quickly, and she begins to live on four pounds a day; half of which is coffee, the rest for travel and some food.

Soon she will go to zero, run out, cease to exist. The twentieth, the day of the rent payment, is approaching; there is less and less money on the card – three hundred pounds she will certainly not scrape together.

In the evening, Emily turns off the lights in the apartment, pulls out a bottle of whiskey she's been saving for a rainy day, and lies on her bed, leaning her head back. She tries to convince herself that everything will be okay, but it doesn't work; Clark still looms before her eyes.

I wouldn't leave anyway.

The whiskey is bitter and nasty, bringing nothing but nausea and a burning sensation in her stomach; she can't and can't drink; and all the romantic clich'es of getting drunk and calling someone she needs turn out to be just beautiful shimmers in a color movie.

Half an hour later, the phone rings deafeningly, and the mother declares in a shrill, high-pitched, vowel-pulling voice:

– It's because you're not married! If you had a rich, strong, strong man by your side, you wouldn't get fired!

– What is the connection? – Emily asks aloofly.

– You would have someone to support you! Someone to help you! Gave you money! Wouldn't have had to pay your rent! And I told you," said Mrs. Johnson, indignantly, "I told you, I told you, medicine, sunshine, is not your thing; it's not a girl's thing. It's where you want men who can take care of other people and not just themselves!

Emily chuckles as Clark, in her head, dances off toward the exit, adjusting his long, toe-length, gray beard.