One Last Thing Before I Go

surprised by the question, but seems to welcome it. “This was my first time.”
    “Shit.”
    “Yeah.”
    “How was it?”
    She takes a long time to answer. “It was actually very lovely,” she says, and then bursts into tears.
    * * *
    There aren’t a lot of forms to fill out, since E.I. doesn’t take insurance. And Casey wouldn’t have used insurance anyway, since she wants no explanation of benefits showing up in Denise’s mailbox. The price of an early intervention turns out to be six hundred and twenty-eight dollars. He supposes a round number would seem equally odd. He’s brought the cash with him, reducing his checking account roughly by half and giving the whole enterprise a whiff of the illicit. After paying, he joins Casey in a small private waiting room furnished with two leather couches, a water cooler, and two end tables covered with pamphlets, all trying to put a happy face on the situation.
    Casey grabs a pamphlet and reads aloud to him. “‘The entire procedure takes less than ten minutes. Cramping during the procedure is tolerable, and only lasts for a few minutes. There is no recovery period. Women leave the office ready to resume their everyday activities.’”
    “Sounds great,” he says. “Why doesn’t everyone do it this way?”
    “You have to be between five and ten weeks. After that, you have to go hard-core.”
    They sit in companionable silence for a few moments. He leans back on the couch and closes his eyes, experiencing a sudden, crushing wave of unearned exhaustion.
    “Can you tell me something?” Casey says.
    “What?”
    “Anything. Just talk to me until they’re ready.”
    “I don’t know what to talk about.”
    “Are you lonely?”
    “Right now?”
    “In general.”
    “I don’t know. Sometimes.”
    “Do you have a girlfriend?”
    “No.”
    “A fuck buddy?”
    “I did bring a woman home the other night.”
    “Go, Silver. How was it?”
    “She just wanted to be held.”
    “Oh, well.”
    “It’s OK. Sex isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be . . .”
    “He said to his pregnant daughter in the waiting room of the abortion clinic.”
    Silver smiles. Despite his best efforts, she has emerged as a bright, witty, beautiful, and largely well-adjusted kid. Sometimes when he is with her, the sense of what he’s lost is powerful enough to flatten his lungs, which may be why he’s been so bad about being around in the years since the divorce.
    The room is too warm, even sitting right beneath the central air vent, and the ringing in his left ear has reached the point where it is starting to crackle like a fire. He holds his breath and presses his palms to his ears, emitting a low hum from deep in his throat to counteract the whine in his ears. After a few moments, the whine recedes and then, to his surprise, it fades altogether. Blessed silence explodes across his head.
    “Dad!”
    She called me Dad, he thinks.
    He opens his eyes to find Casey standing over him, looking panicked.
    “What’s wrong?” she says.
    He opens his mouth to tell her he’s fine, just a little tired. He can feel the words forming in his throat, but nothing comes out. Casey disappears for a second then returns with a middle-aged woman in a white doctor’s coat.
    “Mr. Silver?” she says. “Can you hear me?”
    “Of course I can hear you,” he says, and moves to stand up. But nothing happens. He can’t feel his limbs, can’t move his lips, can’t make a sound. He closes his eyes for a second. He can’t get over how quiet it is in his head, no buzzing at all. He hasn’t heard silence like this in years. He wants to wrap it around himself like a blanket and weep with relief.
    When he opens his eyes again, he’s in the hospital.

CHAPTER 13
    I f there’s a good thing about waking up in a hospital it’s that, even with your brain still flickering like a loose bulb, it takes only the faintest germ of lucidity to figure out where you are. The beep of the heart monitor, the smell of industrial disinfectant, the overly starched sheets, and your wife sitting in the chair beside you.
    Ex-wife.
    Right.
    Denise is squinting into her magazine in much the same way she used to squint at him, peering into his workings like a mechanic trying to find the frayed wire, the loose connection responsible for his host of malfunctions. This sense memory of her habitual contempt serves as a toehold for his short-term memory, which doesn’t so much come back as reveal itself to have been