“This is what you’re dealing with,” her doctor had said, showing her the size of the liver on a diagram—it took up half a ribcage, which was exactly his point. “It’s the biggest organ we’ve got and yours isn’t working. Blood tests will probably confirm you have Hepatitis A, so if you can’t get one hundred percent bedrest for a month at least, I’ll have to send you to the hospital for infectious diseases.”
No, thanks, she thought. A month?
“Hepatitis isn’t to be messed with. You’re really very ill.”
“Of course she’ll get total rest,” her mother had insisted. “She’ll be fine at home.”
But Thea was not fine. Her sister Kate was in Cork, her brothers in college, and her parents at work all day, and they seemed to think that leaving a kettle beside the bed, with teabags, a mug, and milk, amounted to good care, as if she had no more than a bad cold. So she lay in bed, untended. Getting up to go to the bathroom was as much exertion as she was allowed and as much as she could manage, and since she had to drink gallons every day, she was more out of the bed than in it, either pottering up to the next landing to the bathroom or down to get more water. She was spending half the day on the stairs. It was lonely too, even more so than in that hotel room. At least there she had room service and Sachiv, whom she missed now with every breath she took.
Her spirits were so low as to be underground. When the door slammed every morning, a silence settled in, like some invisible being who took over the house when everyone else went out, but she had neither the energy nor the inclination to see friends. In the evenings, her father sat on her bed and read to her from the newspapers and her mother went on cooking as normal—failing to provide fat-free meals as instructed by their doctor. They simply expected Thea to avoid whatever was bad for her. By eight o’clock they had retreated to the television. Her illness, to them, was a blessing. It had taken her out of a war zone.
It was fortuitous that when Brona called to see how she was doing, Thea answered the phone herself.
“You’re not supposed to be out of bed,” her aunt cried.
“Everyone’s out.”
“But you mustn’t be rushing down to the phone. The man said one hundred percent bedrest!”
“Sorry. I came down because I wanted to hear a voice.” Thea’s eyes welled with tears.
“Thea?”
She didn’t hold back. Apprised of the details of her recovery, her father’s sister said, “This is no way to get well. You must come down here to recuperate.”
“Brona, I could get back to Baghdad in less time than it would take me to get to you!” She was easily swayed, though. She adored her aunt, who was also her godmother, and getting away from home, where failure of so many different hues bounced back at her from the bedroom walls, was tempting. Seven hours in the car seemed a small price to pay for a bit of easy company.
The house in West Cork was big and empty, the rooms small and cozy, and Brona was there, bringing Thea fat-free breakfasts and tea on demand. Her blankets were smoothed and a fresh nightie brought every day. It struck Thea as particularly sad that her aunt, who was such a natural carer, had never had children and had been widowed in her forties, yet she lived in that remote place, looking down on the jagged slate-like rocks that protected the coastline like barbed wire. The Atlantic, Brona used to say, was like a husband—sometimes cross, sometimes calm, but always there, solicitous, and wise enough to know when to intrude on her thoughts and her chores, and when not to. “I don’t live alone,” she said to Thea. “Me and the Atlantic, we’re like a snail and an elephant sharing the same garden.” Sometimes Thea would come across her standing at the sink, looking out across the bay toward Mizen Head. “I feed off it,” she explained one day. “I suck it into my heart and am always the better for it.” She turned. “And it’ll do the same for you, pet.”
Brona played her part too. She read her niece well (though Thea was baffled as to how she managed to be so intuitive, happy hermit that she was): she guessed there was a man and told Thea what to do with him. She scolded her because he was married, but cared for her because she was hurt.
One afternoon, she came up to Thea’s bright, sunny room with tea and bread—biscuits were off the menu—and found her lying on her side, staring at the dormer window, her fingers deep in the belly fur of the sleeping cat stretched along her chest. Setting down the mug, then the plate, Brona said, “Would you not read a book or those magazines I got you?”
“No concentration.”
“Or concentrating, is it, too much on the one thing? All this pining isn’t going to make you better.”
“No, it makes me feel even more wasted.”
“Ah, darling,” she said, “that’s no good.”
Thea stroked the cat’s back. “I didn’t even realize I’d fallen so hard, Brona.
