Sleep Toward Heaven Read Online Free PDF Page B

something of herself, to make something better of the world.
    Franny gripped the pencil. Not again. Stay professional, be strong, she wrote. She resolved right then and there, the subway careening around a corner, picking up speed, that she would not let her emotions become tangled. Patients were bodies, cells, synapses, blood. She had to look at them as if they were jigsaw puzzles: maybe if I put this piece at this angle…She had always been good at jigsaw puzzles. It was the guessing games she had hated.
    Jane Dikeman was brushing her hair in the hospital locker room. Franny smiled quickly, opened her locker, and pulled out her coat. “Franny?” said Jane, not turning from the mirror, gathering her hair into a ponytail, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry about that girl.”
    Franny shrugged and stared into her locker. She pressed her lips together. She looked at her apple shampoo, her red running shorts, dog-eared books. Her locker smelled like mold.
    “Did you hear me?” said Jane.
    Franny turned around. “It’s fine,” she said. In her own ears, her voice was breezy. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling on her lab coat as she walked past Jane.
    Franny’s beeper sounded as she was gathering charts: Jed. She simply wasn’t ready to talk to him. She needed more time. The charts swam in front of her eyes: diagrams, notes in her steady hand. Franny thought suddenly of Nat, of making love to him, covering him with kisses in a hot bathtub. Her knees went weak, and she grabbed the edge of the counter. She could hear her blood in her ears. She went quickly into the ladies’ room, slipped into a stall. She pressed her face against the cool metal door.
    Don’t cry, she heard Uncle Jack tell her, his syllables long and slow. Don’t let them see you cry, Baby Doll.
    Jed was in his office, transcribing tapes. He was a tall man with skin the color of licorice. His coat had coffee stains on it, as usual, and something else: peanut butter? He was Franny’s mentor, the chief internist, and one of her only friends. “Hello?” Franny tapped at the door.
    “Franny, come in.” He stood, snapped off his recorder, and took a pile of papers off a seat, gesturing for Franny to sit down. “I’m sorry about the Gillison girl.”
    Franny nodded. “I want you to know,” she said, “that I’m fine. I’m fine.”
    Jed smiled, shook his head. “How could you be?” he said. He closed his door, blocking them from view.
    “Well, I’m not going to…”
    “What?” said Jed.
    “I became involved, I guess, in a way that I won’t again,” said Franny.
    Jed looked at her. “I know,” he said.
    “Dr. Duncan seemed so distant. As if he’d given up on Anna. I tried to step in, to…” Franny stopped and looked at the floor. “I know that I can’t think of my patients as—”
    “As human? Good luck, Fran. I remember the first patient I lost,” said Jed. “Randall Eggers. He was a professional golfer. We talked about golf. I misdiagnosed his tumor as a headache. By the time my attending gave him a CT, he had lost months, maybe a year of his life.” Jed took a sip of the coffee on his desk, made a face, and spit it back. “Don’t want to know how old that is,” he said.
    “Thanks, Jed. I—”
    “Franny, listen, you’re going to care. We’re not robots.” He paused, as if searching for words that she could keep. “Don’t take it home with you,” he said, “That’s one thing. I lost Rachel that way. Don’t let that happen to you and Nat.” He sighed. “You have to turn it off,” he said. “It’s like a faucet, Franny, and you let it run, and then you turn it off and go home.”
    “I can turn it off,” said Franny, and she knew it was true.
    “Good,” said Jed. He seemed to be thinking of something else. “That’s good for you,” he said.
    That weekend, Franny woke in Nat’s parents’ house, on Milton Road, in Rye, New York. It was six weeks before their wedding. She could smell Nat’s family downstairs: