Bitter Business

It prevents the body from using the oxygen in blood by crippling the cytochrome oxidase system that converts oxygen’s energy to a form the body can use. That’s why cyanide poisoning is sometimes referred to as internal asphyxia because even though the person may be taking in air through the lungs, it isn’t being absorbed into the bloodstream.”
    “Which is why CPR doesn’t do any good,” I said, wrapping my arms around myself.
    Stephen said nothing as we turned off the drive at Fifty-seventh Street and headed for the hospital.
     
    * * *
     
    It was eleven o’clock at night, but in the emergency room at the University of Chicago Medical Center, it might as well have been noon. Most of my roommate Claudia’s patients come to her through the ER, and while there’s no such thing as a slow night in the combat zone of a big-city hospital, she, like most people who work there, is fond of predicting whether it will be busy based on all sorts of outside factors—hot weather, a holiday weekend, a full moon—all of which are held to add to the regular number of gunshots and overdoses, women in labor, and general gore that come through their doors.
    Once the elevator carried us above the first floor, however, things grew quieter. Stephen, who’d done his medical training there, had lived five of the most intense years of his life in this building. Since then his work had carried him away from the hands-on practice of medicine. He said he didn’t miss it, but looking at his face, I wasn’t sure.
    When we got to Daniel’s room it was empty. The bed had been stripped down to the obscene black plastic of the hospital mattress. The cards and the flowers were all gone.
    “Maybe he’s been moved,” said Stephen, quickly anticipating my alarm. “Let me go and see if his chart’s at the nurses’ station.” He stepped out into the hall and turned back. “Are you going to be okay?”
    I nodded mutely, staring at the vacant bed, not wanting to move. When Stephen came back the news was no surprise. Daniel had died at three-twenty that afternoon while I was in the air flying back to Chicago. I bit my lip. It had been no secret that he was dying. That was why I’d wanted to come to the hospital tonight and not wait until morning. I thrust my hands miserably into the pockets of my raincoat and felt the plastic sarcophagus of one of the cigars I’d bought for him.
    Suddenly it all seemed so hopeless. Daniel was dead and so was Dagny. The rest of the Cavanaugh family seemed to have embarked on an unalterable course of self-destruction, and in the end what difference did any of it make?
    “I want to go now,” I said, wrapping my coat around myself against the sudden chill.
     
    Even though he lived only a few blocks away, Stephen rarely came to my apartment. His appetite for luxury was enormous and he lived so beautifully that when he came to my apartment he felt like he was slumming. But tonight he took me home without demur, coming in without being asked.
    I knew that I did not love Stephen. I knew that if I did, my heart would not beat faster whenever Elliott Abelman was in the room. But tonight what I felt for Stephen was not about love. I had had a plateful of death and loss and sorrow. That night in my apartment I quite simply hungered for something else.
    I know that women look at Stephen Azorini and imagine what he must be like in bed—what it must be like to possess and be possessed by a man like him. For Stephen and me, sex had always been the constant, the chemistry invariable and dramatic like indoor fireworks. That night, in my own bed, I was seized by the need to drive out the demons of the past week, to exorcise them with the sweat of sex.
    By morning we did such a good job that I think Stephen was going to be hard-pressed to stay awake during his morning meeting.
     
    * * *
     
    I woke up late and made myself coffee. There was a pair of size-six Nikes under the kitchen table. I realized Claudia must have come home sometime during the night—hopefully during one of the lulls in the action.
    I went for a long run. The sun was out and I decided to brave a course through the cultural gardens behind the Museum of Science and Industry. I ran through the immaculately maintained Japanese garden and all the way to South Shore and back without incident. Then I came home and took a long shower. It was nice, I reflected, to spend the night at home for a change. It was nice to avoid that funky walk home on