Chapter 29
Come Good Friday, she couldn’t sleep. She finally dozed for a few hours on Saturday morning, between midnight and three. After
that she was wide awake, staring at the drop ceiling. Her insides were sore. They were always sore these days.
She spoke to Arthur, sometimes, as had always been her habit.
Gwen said, “What else am I supposed to do? I couldn’t beat him now even if I wasn’t all rotten inside, Arthur. He’s at full
strength and he’s ready for us.”
He didn’t reply because he wasn’t there, not even the imaginary version she carried around inside her. She couldn’t picture
him, couldn’t hear his voice.
She said, “I’ve done enough. I gave the others a way to beat him. They’ll be all right. I’m tired and I’m sick and I don’t
want to do this anymore. I don’t want to do any of it without you anymore. No one has the right to ask me to do more than
I’ve already done.”
This was met by a judgmental silence.
“I’ve been lonely ever since you left,” she said. “It’s not fair to me—that I had to do it all alone. My whole life. We were
supposed to get forty years together. We could’ve had kids. We would’ve done the crossword together every morning. We should’ve
had more time.”
The quiet remained unimpressed with her.
“Anyway, I have it coming,” Gwen said. “King Sorrow has killed hundreds in my name. And I let it happen. If I was really as good as everyone thinks, I would’ve asked King Sorrow to take me years ago.
To take me instead of someone else. The only reason King Sorrow keeps killing is because we keep living, and how selfish is that? ”
Someone—a nurse, maybe—laughed as she walked by in the hall.
She gave up trying to fall asleep again and sat up. It took ten minutes to pull all the tubes out of her back, all the needles
out of her arm. By the time Gwen was free, her back was bleeding. She couldn’t see where, but she could feel it, a sticky,
lukewarm dribbling. She had, in the last few days, been making her way to the bathroom, hobbling along on a stainless-steel
frame of the sort favored by arthritic old women. There was a crutch as well, with a foam pad for the armpit. She had, under
the supervision of a physical therapist, made her way around the foot of the bed with the help of that crutch, and felt like
she was being poked in the hip by a hot iron. She reached for it now, got it under the arm, and picked herself up.
A sweat sprang out on her face. She hopped three steps to a cupboard. She found pads of gauze and tape and a teensy pair of
scissors. She cut herself a gauze pad and was just taping it over the leaking wound in her back when the door opened.
“What are you doing?” said the nurse, an older woman named Rachel, round faced and solid. She had been with the hospital maybe
six years, had three years in the ER. Gwen knew all the nurses.
“Checking out,” Gwen said. She was wearing a Patriots tee and gray sweats Allie had collected days ago, so Gwen would have
some of her own things to wear. She didn’t have shoes, but the hospital socks would do until her Uber got her home.
“You can’t do that,” Rachel said.
“Sure I can. Just watch.”
She turned and began to crutch her way to the door.
She could set her right foot down but didn’t dare put any weight on it.
The shattered bones in her hip had fused themselves back together—a medical impossibility, an Austrian doctor had told her—but it still sent an agonizing twang through her whole right side to bear down on it.
That hip was mostly healed, but the nerve endings didn’t seem to know it.
Rachel chased her down the hall. She was joined by another nurse, a distraught older woman named Inez, who was twisting her
hands together.
“You have to sign here and here,” Rachel said, waving a clipboard.
Gwen hit the button for the elevator. “Sure. Hold that still for me?”
Inez said, “You could be dead in a week, Ms. Underfoot. You have a serious infection and you’re bleeding through your shirt.”
“Not anymore. I threw some gauze on it.”
“We could get a court order to compel you to stay.”
“So get one,” Gwen said. “Let me know when you hear from the judge.” She signed her name on a release.
Rachel said, “This is suicidal. You belong in bed. Healing. For Christ’s sake, Gwen. How many times have you taken an ambulance ride to someone’s house and found them dead when you
got there? Did you ever get used to it? Do you want to do that to someone else? Because whoever comes to pick up your corpse
in a week, or three days, or tomorrow—they’ll be a colleague. A friend. You want to do that to a friend? I never thought of
Gwen Underfoot as a selfish person.”
“I’d say I’m going through a midlife crisis,” Gwen said, “but the way things are shaping up, it looks like the middle of my
life was about twenty-two years ago. This isn’t on you, Rachel. You did your best to keep me here. Now go and look after a
patient who wants your help.” The elevator doors opened. Gwen stepped in alone.