“Yes, they lived together,” she said, smiling, and seeming relieved that I had finally decided to enter the conversation.
“What didn’t Camille understand?” I asked.
“About his work. The amount of time he devotes to it. And — and it gives some people the creeps, I guess. Too bad, really, because . . .” Her voice trailed off, then she said, “I probably shouldn’t be talking about his personal life this way.”
“I’m not trying to make you tell his secrets,” I said. “I’m just concerned about him.”
“Of course you are!” she said. “Even though you’re a reporter . . . I mean . . .”
She went back to tearing at the cup.
“How long ago did he split up with his fiancee?” I asked.
“Camille? I don’t know that it was ever actually an official engagement,” she said.
I waited.
“It’s been a while now,” she said, scooping up the cup fragments and standing up again. “Back at the beginning of last semester — so this past January.”
Jack, Frank, and I exchanged looks. “But that’s only a few months ago,” I said.
She shrugged, then said, “Yes, I guess it is only a few months.” She walked to the trash can. When she came back, she stayed standing, staring at the door to Ben’s room. She took off her daypack, opened it and took out a thick stack of bluebooks. She held them out to me and said, “Would you please do me a favor and give these to Ben?”
“What are they?”
“Final exams.”
“I don’t think he’s in any condition—”
“Of course not. But — he should decide what he wants to do. I think I’m going to go. Please tell him I came by.”
“Wait!” Frank said, as she set them on the table. “Don’t you want to see him?”
“Yes,” she said, “but while I was sitting here, I think I realized that Ben won’t want to see me.” She frowned again. “Maybe I should put it this way — he won’t want me to see him. Not until he’s had a little time to get used to the idea of — he’s had a transtibial amputation, right?”
At our puzzled looks, she clarified, “Below the knee.”
We nodded in unison, all fairly dumbfounded.
“Well,” she went on, “I don’t know everything there is to know about Ben, but I do know that he’s not crazy about appearing vulnerable, and that he would really hate it if anybody pitied him, but it would make him stark, raving batshit to see someone he teaches pitying him.”
More softly, she added, “I feel so sad about David and everything else that happened, and I’m afraid that Ben might mistake that for pity, and the truth is, I’m not sure what I will feel if I actually see Ben lying there hurt, or missing his foot, and so — so I think if you give him these papers to grade, it will help him — because, you know, he can do this without a foot — but I’d better not be here.”
And before any of us could recover from hearing this speech, she was gone.
“Because he can do that without a foot?” I asked blankly.
Jack started shaking with silent laughter, and Frank held up a hand to hide a grin, then made a little snorting sound. When I scowled at them, and said I was sure she meant well, Jack laughed harder, wheezing with it, really — and in the way hilarity will strike when you least want it to, we all lost it then.
At that moment, Ben’s doctors — a man and a woman — came down the hall to talk to us. We sobered instantly.
“No,” the woman said, “don’t worry.” She was tall, dark-haired, smartly dressed. Both doctors appeared to be in their early fifties. “Laughter helps to let a little of the tension out,” she said with a reassuring smile.
They introduced themselves as Greg Riley, Ben’s surgeon, and Jo Robinson, a clinical psychologist.
“Have a seat,” Dr. Riley said. “Let’s talk for a minute.”
When we were seated, Dr. Robinson said, “Ben has given us permission to discuss his case with you, but Ms. Kelly, knowing what you do for a living, of course I have to tell you that—”
“I’m not here as a reporter,” I said. “Nothing you say to me will end up in the newspaper.”
Riley nodded. “I appreciate that. The hospital administrators are going to have my hide if I don’t get downstairs and help them conduct a press conference, so I’m going to leave a little of the job I’d normally do to Jo. She’s heard everything I’ve had to say to Ben, and if you have any other questions, call my office — I’m in the book. I’d give you a card, but I don’t have one on me at the moment.”
For all their efforts to put us at ease, I realized I had tensed up from the moment I saw them. I had to own up to a fear of seeing Ben awake and in this altered state, of reacting in the wrong way, of doing or saying something that would hurt him. What if Ellen Raice had been the smartest one of us all?
Dr. Riley laid out a set of statistics in what was obviously a speech he had given to other patients’ family and friends on other occasions. Most of them went right past me. “It has been estimated that every week, about three thousand people in this country undergo an amputation,” he was saying now. “But as high as that number is, awareness about limb loss is shamefully low. As far as Ben Sheridan is concerned, of course, there’s only been one such surgery. And he’s right, because each case is unique.”
After a pause, he said, “Let’s just talk about Ben’s case.”
