The Surrendered

“That isn’t it.”

She was in fact suffering, but as yet still only in the corporeal sense. Her mind, she felt, was still sharp, and steely. It could still see each moment from every side. “Then I don’t understand, June. Why must you do this? Why thwart our efforts? You must appreciate how far we’ve come already.”

“Of course I do. You’re magnificent. Everyone here has been magnificent.”

“Then let’s keep on!” he said. She could tell he’d registered her appreciation by his rolling over it. More than anything else, she liked Koenig for this feature of his character.

“You should have a patient who wants to be here fully. There are dozens waiting, I know.”

“We’ll care for them in time. We are focusing on you now. We choose our patients carefully and we give everything we have and we don’t let go from day one.”

“But you knew then.”

“What? What did I know?” Koenig gasped, waving his hands.

“That I was already dead.”

“So aren’t we all!” he shouted angrily. The sudden flash of his feeling animated her and deliciously, if only momentarily, suspended the pain. “We cheat time, June, all of us, whether we’re ill or not. Most of us only realize it when we’re not well. But I don’t believe we have a certain allotment at birth or one fixed by fate or anything else. We can extend time for anyone who wants it. And I don’t want to hear about ‘quality of life’ or some such. Life is quality of life. If you can take nourishment and communicate and conceive of tomorrow, then another day is riches enough.”

He spoke as he always did, with the ample authority and startling egoism of a celebrated healer, and yet through his conviction and bombast June could discern the doctor as a less than invincible figure, perhaps a boy whose mother died young, or whose sibling grew up chronically sick, someone who had witnessed a wretched dwindling and instead of abiding the measured response or swift act of mercy had become an unceasing forge of the realm.

“I won’t disagree with you,” she said to him. “I can’t.”

“Then don’t give up now!”

“I’m not giving up.”

“You will be if you leave. We’re at a critical moment. We’re on the cusp of succeeding, but it’s perilous, and there’s no room at all for hesitation. Even the short time we’ve wasted this afternoon can make a difference. I believe this. Now, I’m going to call my resident back in here and you’re going to allow him to do his work. Do you agree that this should happen? I know you do. You do, yes? Today and tomorrow and the next day.”

He had held her by the points of her shoulders and his gaze was not so much searching as it was rallying her. Or attempting to. But even the gentle cupping of his hands felt as if he were abrading her skin, this wildfire skittering over her back and neck, and she could barely keep from grimacing. It was not that she meant to deceive him, though she knew she would be doing so. After he had gone and before the young resident could return, she dressed herself quickly and wrote Koenig a note:

My whole life I cheated days. Please give the rest of mine to someone else.

How she wished that she could take that note back. Somehow her condition improved dramatically after she left the hospital, her body lithe and loose and vigorous, but since the day she met Clines her condition had deteriorated. She was now more and more dependent on the painkillers Koenig had had his resident deliver to her, her mind feeling sharpest when she was counting up the pills and vials (which was a way of counting time), as well as the stack of forward-dated prescriptions he’d insisted on giving her. The last few reached well into the following year, and sometimes she shuffled through them with gratitude like they were unanticipated greeting cards, salutations from a future telling of a very different longevity.

As the car crossed the bridge to New Jersey, the southerly view of the evening lights of the metropolis glinted beckoningly, showing a path to the harbor and then the open sea. She was always somewhat fearful of the water, having never learned how to swim, yet now she imagined pulling herself through the black river, her limbs motoring in purposeful rhythm, every muscle singing with heat, her body once again bristling. She saw a young Nicholas swimming beside her, instinctively trusting her to lead them and staying close, keeping up when she pushed the pace, then tucking himself against her belly to rest. She placed her hand on her stomach now and it was as if she felt him there instead of the huge dense egg of the tumor that had taken her over and had spread itself in every part. When she was pregnant with him she was terribly sick, not just in the first weeks or in the morning but constantly and nearly right up to the birthing, a welling, tormenting nausea that reached high in her throat and kept her from eating much and nurtured the horrid idea that if she were to fall so ill as to have to terminate, then let it be. When the nurse placed him on her chest after she awoke from the emergency Caesarean (he wouldn’t come out, his head too large) she’d actually gagged through her tears of wonderment-she only found out later that sickness often came after anesthesia-and the first words she said to him were, I’m sorry.

She was sorry, was she not?

They sometimes took the ride over like this to Palisades Park when he was in elementary school; they lived in Morningside Heights then and it was easier to cross the bridge than go downtown to Thirty-second Street for an early-Sunday di

Was the letter from the antiquities dealer in London evidence that during his years away he had moderated the extremes of his person? Or was it proof of a more frightening mastery? That he had decided to work in the antiques business, of all things, made her think she hadn’t damaged him. He certainly enjoyed the shop. After school Nicholas would contentedly spend the hours until di