“ ‘Artesia,’ ” he says.
“Is that it?” she asks.
“That’s the latest name,” he says. They have been trading names for the restaurant he will someday open since he started at the Culinary Institute. “You like it?”
“As long as I don’t think about the cattle town in New Mexico.”
“No shit,” he says, and she can imagine him at the other end of the phone, ducking his head the way his dad does. Dan is an inch taller than Gus, with the same long legs and arms. Unfortunately, he got her father’s hairline and already, at twenty-five, his bare temples make her tender and protective.
“I can fly out,” he says.
“It’s not like surgery,” she says, suddenly irritated. She wants him to fly out, but there isn’t any point in it. “And I’d get tired of us sitting there holding hands for the next three months while they eradicate the plaque, because as far as you and I will be able to tell, nothing will be happening.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Dan,” she says. “I feel as if I’m spending your money.”
“I don’t care about the money. I don’t like to talk about it that way, anyway,” he says. “I just feel weird because Dad said not to do it.”
“I know,” she says. “But I don’t feel as if this person is your dad anymore.”
“It won’t be Dad when it’s done, will it?” Dan says.
“No,” Mila says. “No, but at least maybe it will be a person who can take care of himself.”
“Look, Mom,” he says, his voice serious and grown-up. “You’re there. You’re dealing with it every day. You do what you have to do. Don’t worry about me.”
She feels tears well up in her eyes. “Okay, honey,” she says. “Well, you’ve got stuff you need to do.”
“Call me if you want me to come out,” he says.
She wants him off the phone before she cries. “I will,” she says.
“Love you, Mom,” he says.
She knows he can tell she was crying.
“I’m not sick,” Gus says.
“It’s a check-up,” Mila says.
Gus sits on the examining room table in his shorts and T-shirt. It used to be that she said the litany of what she loved when she saw him like this-his nose, his blue eyes made to look the distance, the hollow of his collarbone, his long legs. Show me your butt, she’d say, and he’d turn and shake it at her and they’d cackle like children.
“We’ve waited long enough,” Gus says.
“It’s not that long,” Mila says, and at that moment the doctor knocks and opens the door. With him is a technician, a black woman, with a cart.
“Who are you?” Gus says.
“I’m Dr. Feingold.” He is patient, is Dr. Feingold. He met with them for an hour yesterday and he talked with them for a few minutes this morning before Gus had his blood work. But Gus doesn’t remember. Gus was worse than usual. They are in Atlanta for the procedure. Lexington, Kentucky, and Windsor, Ontario, both have clinics that do the procedures, but Dr. Feingold had worked with Raymond Miller, the Ph.D. who originated the treatment. So she picked Atlanta.
Gus is agitated. “You’re not my doctor,” he says.
Dr. Feingold says, “I’m a specialist, Mr. Schuster. I’m going to help you with your memory problems.”
Gus looks at Mila.
“It’s true,” she says.
“You’re trying to hurt me,” Gus says. “In fact, you’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
“No, honey,” she says. “You’re sick. You have Alzheimer’s. I’m trying to help you.”
“You’ve been poisoning me,” Gus says. Is it because he’s scared? Because everything is so strange?
“Do you want to get dressed?” Dr. Feingold says. “We can try this in an hour.”
“I don’t want to try anything,” Gus says. He stands up. He’s wearing white athletic socks and he has the skinny calves of an old man. The disease has made him much older than fifty-seven. In a way she is killing him. Gus will never come back and now she’s going to replace him with a stranger.
“Take some time,” Dr. Feingold says. Mila has never been to a doctor’s office where the doctor wasn’t scheduled to death. But then again, she’s never paid $74,000 for a doctor’s visit, which is what today’s injection of brain scrubbing Transglycyn will cost. Not really just the visit and the Transglycyn. They’ll stay here two more days and Gus will be monitored.
“Goddamn,” Gus says, sitting back down. “Goddamn you all.”
“All right, Mr. Schuster,” Dr. Feingold says.
The technician pushes the cart over and Dr. Feingold says, “I’m going to give you an injection, Mr. Schuster.”
“Goddamn,” Gus says again. Gus never much said “Goddamn” before.
The Transglycyn with the enzyme is supposed to be injected in the spine but Dr. Feingold takes a hypodermic and gives Gus a shot in the crook of his arm.
“You just lie there a moment,” Dr. Feingold says.
Gus doesn’t say anything.
“Isn’t it supposed to be in his back?” Mila says.
“It is,” Dr. Feingold says, “but right now I want to reduce his agitation. So I’ve given him something to calm him.”
“You didn’t say anything about that,” she says.
“I don’t want him to change his mind while we’re giving him the enzyme. This will relax him and make him compliant.”
“Compliant,” she says. She’s supposed to complain, they’re drugging him and they didn’t tell her they would. But she’s pretty used to him not being compliant. Compliant sounds good. It sounds excellent. “Is it a tranquilizer?” she asks.
“It’s a new drug,” Dr. Feingold says. He is writing it down on Gus’s chart. “Most tranquilizers can further agitate patients with Alzheimer’s.”
“I have Alzheimer’s,” Gus says. “It makes me agitated. But sometimes I know it.”
“Yes, Mr. Schuster,” Dr. Feingold says. “You do. This is Vicki. Vicki is someone who helps me with this all the time, and we’re very good at doing it, but when we roll you on your side, I need you to lie very still, all right?”
Gus, who hated when doctors patronized him, says dopily, “All right.” Gus, who during a colonoscopy, higher than a kite on Demerol, asked his doctor if they had gotten to the ileum, because even with his brain cradled in opiates, Gus just liked to know.
Vicki and Dr. Feingold roll Gus onto his side.
“Are you comfortable, Mr. Schuster?” Vicki asks. She has a down-home Atlanta accent.
Dr. Feingold goes out the door. He comes back in with two more people, both men, and they put a cushion behind Gus’s knees so it’s hard for him to roll over, and then another cushion at the back of his neck.
“Are you all right, Mr. Schuster?” Dr. Feingold asks. “Are you comfortable?”
“Okay,” Gus says, fuzzy.
Vicki pulls his undershirt up and exposes his knobby backbone. Dr. Feingold marks a place with a black pen. He feels Gus’s back like a blind woman, his face absent with concentration, and then he takes a needle and says, “There will be a prick, Mr. Schuster. This will make the skin on your back numb, okay?” He gives Gus another shot.
Gus says “Ow” solemnly.
And then Dr. Feingold and Vicki make some marks with the pen. Then there is another needle, and Dr. Feingold makes a careful injection in Gus’s back. He leaves the needle in a moment, pulls the part of the hypodermic out that had medication in it, and Vicki takes it and gives him another one and he puts that in the hypodermic and injects it.
Mila isn’t sure if that’s more painkiller or the Transglycyn.
“Okay, Mr. Schuster,” Dr. Feingold says. “We’re done with the medicine. But you lie still for a few minutes.”
