Merry rested her head on her arms, her hair spilling on the counter. She turned toward me, looking like a sleepy five-year-old smeared with her mother's makeup. "I'm seeing one of the guys from Columbia. I could stay in his room."

"Right. You're going to live in some guy's dorm."

Merry sat up and walked her fingers up and down her chest. My fingers itched to pull them away.

"Listen," I said. "We'll work this out, I promise. Leave everything to me. You only have a few months till you graduate."

Merry shook her head. "I don't know if I can make it that long."

I took her hand away from her chest. "You'll make it. When you need to, you can come up to Boston." As I spoke, Boston's freedom shrank away.

Henry Yee gave me a quiet smile as I punched one of his pillows into a more comfortable shape. His room had become my salvation since Anne Cohen died. I didn't know if I'd started seeing Henry out of attraction or because I needed a peaceful place to study on the weekends that Merry visited. My dorm room had become her escape, and when she was there, the walls closed in on me.

Henry stroked my arm as though touching a present.

"You have lovely skin." He touched his chunky fingers to the tops of my meager b.r.e.a.s.t.s and smiled. "Perfect."

Henry deemed perfect those things most men found wanting. My girlish b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the almost-black eyes that most men found spooky, my boyish, straight hips-perfect, perfect, perfect according to Henry. What one guy had called my friggin' inability to express anything that's not a G.o.dd.a.m.ned fact seemed catnip to Henry. We both valued having a significant someone who didn't care that we spent ninety-nine percent of our waking moments buried in a stack of books. We were simply grateful to share s.e.x and watching Sat.u.r.day Night Live.

I laid my head on Henry's fleshy chest. He talked about going to the gym, swimming, lifting weights, but we both knew his words were hollow. It didn't matter to me-his endomorphic body comforted my ectomorphic build.

He nibbled his way down my body in his usual fashion. Henry and I made love as I imagined middle-aged married people might. Nothing outlandish. No surprises. We were satisfied.

"I'll rub your back, and then you do me," Henry said. He rolled me over and ma.s.saged my back the way I liked, long, deep strokes. I groaned. We took turns erasing the week's tension from each other's muscles. I hoped I could stay awake long enough to give Henry a compensatory ma.s.sage.

We'd been together four months, since January. So far, we'd gone to one movie and eaten out twice, and on both our so-called dates we'd doubled with Ron and Marta, who'd also connected in a medical school quasi romance. Like ours, their relationship consisted of s.e.x, studying, and watching television while eating cheap takeout.

Henry and I had the advantage of having meals sent over by Henry's mother. I loved Mrs. Yee. She could barely speak English, but she'd smile and say Nice girl each time I came over. Then she'd feed me. My ideal situation might be living with a deaf or non-English-speaking family.

After I stroked Henry's back for a few minutes, we had our meat loaf s.e.x, kissed, and snuggled into our separate sides of the bed. As usual, we fell instantly asleep. Seven hours later, when the alarm went off, I surprised Henry by climbing on top of him.

"We only have half an hour before we have to leave," he said.

I didn't insult him by mentioning this wouldn't take but a few minutes. "Think of how much more relaxed we'll be during the test," I said as I slipped him inside. We had an exam, organic chemistry, that morning. I didn't worry about using s.e.x as a study aid; we often used each other that way. I'd bet half our cla.s.s had paired off because the o.r.g.a.s.mic endorphins helped us memorize how the pneumogastric nerve was distributed.

It was after nine on Monday night when I finally dragged myself back to my dorm room. I'd meant to call Merry the night before and make sure she'd gotten back to New York safely, but I'd forgotten, and then one cla.s.s had followed another in an unceasing round, ending with study group.

My life chased itself in a circle. Stultifying words and pictures piled up in my brain and my notebooks, jamming my circuits until I released the facts and images during tests and in anatomy lab. That day Henry, Ron, Marta, and I had labored over the tangled ma.s.s of nerves in our cadaver's neck. Twiggy, we'd named her. She'd died of anorexia, or so we'd surmised using the scant differential diagnostic tools available in our circ.u.mstance. Twiggy's body became an Erector set in our hands.

I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Cabot's medical student dorms were worn and seedy. Scruffy carpeting the color of vacuumed dirt lined the hallway. Doors and halls were devoid of decorations. Female medical students had a series of single-occupancy cells where we lived like nuns who screwed. I'd wake at odd times to hear Irene next door humping and thumping away, the thin walls pounding rhythmically, until upon reaching o.r.g.a.s.m, she'd shriek theatrically. I was glad the feral Irene only occasionally attracted partners willing to visit her room.

Incense, marijuana odors, and the vision of Merry stoned on my bed a.s.saulted me when I opened my door. "What the h.e.l.l are you still doing here?" I asked.

Merry turned her head from where she lay on the bed, her pot-red eyes barely focusing on me. Rick Springfield crooned from the tinny speakers of my tape player. Red sweatpants-my favorites-and Henry's gray University of Michigan sweatshirt, which he kept in my room, engulfed my sister. She'd propped the dirty soles of her little feet on the wall, tapping to the beat.

"I couldn't face it," Merry said.

"Face what?" I wanted her out of my room.

"Everything. Doctor Cohen. Eleanor coming over to look daggers at me and making me babysit for her kids. Daddy's letters begging me to come because I haven't visited in three weeks."

"I doubt that happens all in one day." I picked up the empty tub of ready-made onion dip and a half-empty bag of Doritos and slammed them in the trash. "And you're not responsible for our father."

I didn't look forward to spending precious sleep hours cleaning up Merry's mess. "Have you been alone in here all weekend?"

"Daddy doesn't have one other person in the world, except me. In addition, for your information, no, I wasn't alone all weekend. I met someone nice from the floor below."

"That's the guys' floor."

"Isn't that the point?" Merry laughed and reached into a king-size bag of M&M's, coming up with a handful so large she had to jam it into her mouth.

"Does this guy know that you're still in high school?"

She rolled over on her side. Her deceptively innocent look and dirty-girl att.i.tude made a perfect odalisque. Compared to Merry, I was an Amish schoolmarm crossed with Grandma Zelda.

"I don't think he'd care either way."

"How about some self-respect?" I waved my arms around the room, indicating everything-the pot, her s.k.a.n.kiness, the c.r.a.ppy food she'd been living on. "Not to mention showing some respect for me, for my s.p.a.ce, my stuff."

"Your s.p.a.ce? I need to show more respect for your stuff? You don't realize how lucky you are; at least you have this fricking room. What have I got?" Merry's voice got louder and shriller. "Nothing. I come to see you, and I get about fifteen minutes of Madame Medical Student's attention before you leave."

"I'm studying. I'm working."

"You're s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g Henry. Can't you give it up one night?" Merry tucked her knees under Henry's sweatshirt, her voice turning plaintive. "Will you stay here tonight?"

"No, I can't. Not when you make my place look like this. This has to stop. I never know what I'm going to find here, who I'm going to find here, and I'm not planning to wake you up from some weed haze before I can get into my own bed."

My words seemed to melt Merry. She fell on her back, letting the bag of M&M's drop to the floor. "All I have is you, Lu. Sometimes, I can't even breathe unless I get high or have someone with me."

I scowled but held my tongue, sighing and then stretching out on the bed beside her. She rolled over and put her arms around me.

"It's okay. You'll be okay." I felt her heart beating.

"Daddy's going to be upset; this is my third weekend not seeing him."

"Is that what's bothering you?"

"You don't have to say it like that. That's just a part, and anyway, isn't that plenty? I have to worry about him being all alone and sad waiting for me, and then him getting mad."

"Just forget about him. Stop going."

"You make it sound so simple." Merry pulled away. "I can't do it like you. I can't just shut him out."

"Learn how." I got up and began gathering empty food wrappers. "For your own self-preservation."

"You just wish I'd stop seeing Daddy, so you could stop thinking about him."

"There's not much chance of that." I savagely folded a pizza box and stuffed it in the trash can. "Not with you always talking about him and bringing him in the room whenever you come."

Merry swung her feet off the side of my bed. "Daddy's always in the room, Lu. You forget that saying he's dead is just a frickin' story. Not talking about him isn't going to make him any less alive."

"Seeing him isn't going to bring back Mama." I bent down and picked up another dirty sock.

'If that's why you think I see him, you're clueless," Merry said. "Don't you want to know why I see Daddy?"

I shook out a crumpled towel and shoved it into the hamper. "No."

14.

Lulu December 1986 I swore I could still feel the cheap prison paper crackling in my hand even though I'd washed my hands surgeon-style after crumpling my father's letter and throwing it in the trash, then washed them again the moment I'd arrived at the ER. With harsh hospital soap. However, my father's letter kept worming into my head and sliming my skin, his words ricocheting like bullets.

Why don't you come visit me?

You're not afraid of me, are you, Lulu?

We can talk, we need to talk, Cocoa Puff.

It's making me crazy not seeing you, sugar.

I'm your father for G.o.d's sake.

I rode a wave of nausea as I smiled at my young patient. I tensed my neck muscles for a moment, determined to squeeze my father from my head. I didn't know why I'd opened the letter instead of throwing it still sealed deep into an outside trash barrel as I usually did.

No matter how hard I pretended he wasn't there, sometimes his hand clawed out and he caught me unawares. I'd chalk today's mistake of opening his letter up to overwork.

Thus far, my ER rotation had been a trial by nuclear war. Diagnoses flew from me as I spun from patient to patient. Thank G.o.d, I hadn't begun my internship with the ER like Marta, who'd started here, had turned into an ER zombie within weeks. She had taken to lighting candles in church, chanting, Blessed G.o.d, let me have more patients live than die.

"Melissa, I'm Doctor Zachariah," I introduced myself to my patient.

She nodded, barely looking at me. Plump and December-pale, with limp brown hair hanging over her face, she seemed ready to disappear.

"And this is"-I peered at the student's name tag again-"this is Doug Keller. He's a third-year medical student who'll be working with me today."

"I'll be a.s.sisting Doctor Zachariah," Doug said. He moved toward the exam table.

Melissa pressed her knees close together.

"Where exactly is the pain?" I asked.

Her cheeks turned hot red, and she shrugged.

Doug picked up the chart from the cracked counter. Each time I looked at the crumbling hospital surfaces-the counters, the cabinet k.n.o.bs, the examining table-I imagined microbes jitterbugging along the jagged fissures and wanted to soak the whole place in Clorox.

Doug read the nurse's notes aloud; Melissa twisted her drape tighter with each word. "Abdominal pain, left side, upon intercourse. No localized v.a.g.i.n.al pain. How about when you urinate?" he asked.

"Huh?" she asked.

"Does it hurt when you pee?" I asked.

She gave an infinitesimal nod.

"Let's make you feel better." I squeezed her knee. "Are you in pain now?"

A few tears spilled down Melissa's cheeks. I was afraid sympathy could induce a crying jag faster than cruelty, so I dialed back the compa.s.sion.

Learn one. Do one. Teach one.

I sent off Melissa's lab tests, betting she had pelvic inflammatory disease. Stopping only to wash my hands, I headed to the next patient, giving a perfunctory knock before entering. The odor of alcohol, unwashed flesh, and something indefinable but familiar overwhelmed me. Doug, following along, hesitated at the door.

A fiercely dirty man perched on the exam table. Blood flecked the crumpled paper lining under him. The patient looked to be in his forties but might have been anywhere from twenty-five upward. My time in the ER had showed me how alcohol acts as a fast-forward on the face.

"Mr. Hammond, I'm Doctor Zachariah." I studied his face from a distance, trying to determine if he were still drunk or if the smell of cheap wine came from yesterday's binge. "This is my medical student, Doug Keller."

Per the chart, my patient had been in a bar fight and suffered superficial knife wounds to one of his shoulders and his back. Judging by the amount and color of blood soaking his shirt, that sounded right.

"You need to take off your shirt, Mr. Hammond. We'll leave while you disrobe." Why hadn't the nurses better prepped this patient?

He ignored my instructions and said, "You should see the other guy."

"Right," I said. "But let's take care of you. Tell me, are you in much pain?"

"I'm not in any pain at all, girlie." Bravado filled his voice. "Instead of you taking care of me, how about I take care of you?" He cackled, almost falling off the table as he reached for me. "I'll make you happy, sugar."

"Mr. Hammond, we're going to leave the room. When we come back, please have your shirt off."

"Yeah? How about you don't tell me what to do? Last one who talked to me like that got a lot worse than this." He stripped off his shirt, revealing a long gash from shoulder to elbow. "What's the matter, cat got your tongue, sugar?"

A tight stabbing knifed through my chest. A lump stuck in my throat felt as though I'd swallowed my stethoscope.

"You okay?" Doug asked.

I shook my head, not knowing what I was trying to convey besides the sensation that I might die. I thought he must hear my heart thumping.

"What the h.e.l.l's going on?" Mr. Hammond slurred. "What's wrong with her?"

Shut up. Go away. Go away.

His opened wound gaped at me, begging for closure. Blood matted his thick brown hair. Clumps of it stood straight up.

"She going to take care of me or not?" he demanded.