and other works

of Percy Bysshe Shelley

One corner of the heavy leather cover had been loosened, then glued back. You might not notice it if you weren’t looking for it. I pried it apart with care and extracted a thick bundle of printed pages. There were also many plain lined notebook pages covered in handwriting. All of it slightly crumbly with age, smelling stale and airless.

I spread it all in front of me on the desktop and began to read. A buzzing noise started up in my head, blotting out any other sounds.

After a few minutes? An hour? I finished reading and stood, blinking and wobbly. I got out my phone and took close-up pictures of each page, both printed and handwritten, like a spy or a secret agent. When I had them all, I put the pages back in order and set them in their hiding place in the book’s cover. I resealed the cover, moistening the old glue with water from the kitchen tap so it would hold. Then I returned the book to where I’d found it on the shelves. After a moment I took my phone back out and took a picture of that also.

I still had the business card Larry Nagel had given me, and the next morning he was the first call I made.

It took three days to set everything up. We were meeting at Ed’s law firm in the city. I hadn’t said anything to Oscar or my mother, in case nothing came of it. And maybe because they’d kept a few secrets of their own from me lately.

I picked up Sacha on the way. She asked me if I was nervous about the meeting and I said, Not so much about that, but . . . She reached across the front seat and squeezed my hand.

The care center was sunny and institutionally pleasant, meaning that attention had been given to making the public spaces welcoming, with plants and cheerful wall art and good furniture. Once you reached the patient rooms, there was a more mechanical look to everything. Carts and wheelchairs and electrically powered beds. Machines for assisting with movement, for providing treatments, for measuring medical deficits. I guess I’d thought Viridian would have her own room, perhaps a window with a view. Things that wouldn’t matter much if you needed to be here in the first place.

Viridian was in the bed closest to the door, and a curtain was drawn around the other bed, the unseen one next to the window. The blinds were closed and the light in the room was dim. Sacha reached for Viridian’s hand. The hand appeared to be weightless, curled in on itself, a bundle of twigs.

“Hi Virdie. It’s Sacha. Carla’s here to see you, too.”

It was my turn. I came closer. Her face had already changed so much. I concentrated instead on the rise and fall of her breathing, thin and regular.