He and Harold set off toward the forest, where the rough walkway means that it is easier for him to navigate than it had been when construction began. Even so, he has to concentrate, for the path is only cleared once a season, and in the months between it becomes cluttered with saplings and ferns and twigs and tree matter.
They aren’t quite halfway to the first bench when he knows he has made a mistake. His legs began throbbing as soon as they finished walking down the lawn, and now his feet are throbbing as well, and each step is agonizing. But he doesn’t say anything, just grips his cane more tightly, trying to re-center the discomfort, and pushes forward, clenching his teeth and squaring his jaw. By the time they reach the bench—really, a dark-gray limestone boulder—he is dizzy, and they sit for a long time, talking and looking out onto the lake, which is silvery in the cold air.
“It’s chilly,” Harold says eventually, and it is; he can feel the cool of the stone through his pants. “We should get you back to the house.”
“Okay,” he swallows, and stands, and immediately, he feels a hot stake of pain being thrust upward through his feet and gasps, but Harold doesn’t notice.
They are only thirty steps into the forest when he stops Harold. “Harold,” he says, “I need—I need—” But he can’t finish.
“Jude,” Harold says, and he can tell Harold is worried. He takes his left arm, slings it around his neck, and holds his hand in his own. “Lean on me as much as you can,” Harold says, putting his other arm around his waist, and he nods. “Ready?” He nods again.
He’s able to take twenty more steps—such slow steps, his feet tangling in the mulch—before he simply can’t move any more. “I can’t, Harold,” he says, and by this time he can barely speak, the pain is so extreme, so unlike anything he has felt in such a long time. Not since he was in the hospital in Philadelphia have his legs, his back, his feet hurt so profoundly, and he lets go of Harold and falls to the forest floor.
“Oh god, Jude,” Harold says, and bends over him, helping him to sit up against a tree, and he thinks how stupid, how selfish, he is. Harold is seventy-two. He should not be asking a seventy-two-year-old man, even an admirably healthy seventy-two-year-old man, for physical assistance. He cannot open his eyes because the world is torquing itself around him, but he hears Harold take out his phone, hears him try to call Willem, but the forest is so dense that the reception is poor, and Harold curses. “Jude,” he hears Harold say, but his voice is very faint, “I’m going to have to go back to the house and get your wheelchair. I’m so sorry. I’m going to be right back.” He nods, barely, and feels Harold button his coat closed, feels him push his hands into his coat’s pockets, feels him wrap something around his legs—Harold’s own coat, he realizes. “I’ll be right back,” Harold says. “I’ll be right back.” He hears Harold’s feet running away from him, the crunch of the sticks and leaves as they snap and crumple beneath him.
He turns his head to the side and the ground beneath him shifts, dangerously, and he vomits, coughing up everything he has eaten that day, feels it slide off of his lips and drool down his cheek. Then he feels a bit better, and he leans his head against the tree again. He is reminded of his time in the forest when he was running away from the home, how he had hoped the trees might protect him, and now he hopes for it again. He takes his hand out of his pocket, feels for his cane, and squeezes it as hard as he can. Behind his eyelids, bright spangled drops of light burst into confetti, and then blink out into oily smears. He concentrates on the sound of his breath, and on his legs, which he imagines as large lumpen shards of wood into which have been drilled dozens of long metal screws, each as thick as a thumb. He pictures the screws being drawn out in reverse, each one rotating slowly out of him and landing with a ringing clang on a cement floor. He vomits again. He is so cold. He can feel himself begin to spasm.
And then he hears someone running toward him, and he can smell it is Willem—his sweet sandalwood scent—before he hears his voice. Willem gathers him, and when he lifts him, everything sways again, and he thinks he is going to be sick, but he isn’t, and he puts his right arm around Willem’s neck and turns his vomity face into his shoulder and lets himself be carried. He can hear Willem panting—he may weigh less than Willem, but they are still the same height, and he knows how unwieldy he must be, his cane, still in his hand, banging against Willem’s thighs, his calves knocking against Willem’s rib cage—and is grateful when he feels himself being lowered into his chair, hears Willem’s and Harold’s voices above him. He bends over, resting his forehead on his knees, and is pushed back out of the forest and up the hill to the house, and once inside, he is lifted into bed. Someone takes off his shoes, and he screams out and is apologized to; someones wipes his face; someone wraps his hands around a hot-water bottle; someone wraps his legs with blankets. Above him, he can hear Willem being angry—“Why did you fucking go along with this? You know he can’t fucking do this!”—and Harold’s apologetic, miserable replies: “I know, Willem. I’m so sorry. It was moronic. But he wanted to go so badly.” He tries to speak, to defend Harold, to tell Willem it was his fault, that he made Harold come with him, but he can’t.
“Open your mouth,” Willem says, and he feels a pill, bitter as metal, being placed on his tongue. He feels a glass of water being tipped toward his lips. “Swallow,” Willem says, and he does, and soon after, the world ceases to exist.
When he wakes, he turns and sees Willem in bed with him, staring at him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispers, but Willem doesn’t say anything. He reaches over and runs his hand through Willem’s hair. “Willem,” he says, “it wasn’t Harold’s fault. I made him do it.”
Willem snorts. “Obviously,” he says. “But he still shouldn’t have agreed to it.”
They are quiet for a long time, and he thinks of what he needs to say, what he has always thought but never articulated. “I know this is going to sound illogical to you,” he tells Willem, who looks back at him. “But even all these years later, I still can’t think of myself as disabled. I mean—I know I am. I know I am. I have been for twice as long as I haven’t been. It’s the only way you’ve known me: as someone who—who needs help. But I remember myself as someone who used to be able to walk whenever he wanted to, as someone who used to be able to run.
“I think every person who becomes disabled thinks they were robbed of something. But I suppose I’ve always felt that—that if I acknowledge that I am disabled, then I’ll have conceded to Dr. Traylor, then I’ll have let Dr. Traylor determine the shape of my life. And so I pretend I’m not; I pretend I am who I was before I met him. And I know it’s not logical or practical. But mostly, I’m sorry because—because I know it’s selfish. I know my pretending has consequences for you. So—I’m going to stop.” He takes a breath, closes and opens his eyes. “I’m disabled,” he says. “I’m handicapped.” And as foolish as it is—he is forty-seven, after all; he has had thirty-two years to admit this to himself—he feels himself about to cry.
“Oh, Jude,” says Willem, and pulls him toward him. “I know you’re sorry. I know this is hard. I understand why you’ve never wanted to admit it; I do. I just worry about you; I sometimes think I care more about your being alive than you do.”
He shivers, hearing this. “No, Willem,” he says. “I mean—maybe, at one point. But not now.”
“Then prove it to me,” Willem says, after a silence.
“I will,” he says.
January; February. He is busier than he has ever been. Willem is rehearsing a play. March: Two new wounds open up, both on his right leg. Now the pain is excruciating; now he never leaves his wheelchair except to shower and go to the bathroom and dress and undress. It has been a year, more, since he has had a reprieve from the pain in his feet. And yet every morning when he wakes, he places them on the floor and is, for a second, hopeful. Maybe today he will feel better. Maybe today the pain will have abated. But he never does; it never does. And still he hopes. April: His birthday. The play’s run begins. May: Back come the night sweats, the fever, the shaking, the chills, the delirium. Back he goes to the Hotel Contractor. Back goes the catheter, this time into the left side of his chest. But there is a change this time: this time the bacteria is different; this time, he will need an antibiotic drip every eight hours, not every twenty-four. Back comes Patrizia, now two times a day: at six a.m., at Greene Street; at two p.m. at Rosen Pritchard; and at ten p.m. again at Greene Street, a night nurse, Yasmin. For the first time in their friendship, he sees only one performance of Willem’s play: his days are so segmented, so controlled by his medication, that he is simply unable to go a second time. For the first time since this cycle began a year ago, he feels himself tumbling toward despair; he feels himself giving up. He has to remind himself he must prove to Willem that he wants to remain alive, when all he really wants to do is stop. Not because he is depressed, but because he is exhausted. At the conclusion of one appointment, Andy looks at him with a strange expression and tells him that he’s not sure if he’s realized, but it’s been a month since he last cut himself, and he thinks about this. Andy is right. He has been too tired, too consumed to think about cutting.