That first visit was pretty useless. Nick was still too groggy with anesthetics, and we were all too shocked to make it memorable. When I returned later that evening, I knew he’d be asleep, but I wanted to see him. Needed to see him.
As it often does in the mountains—didn’t know it then, but do now—the sky cleared just before sundown. After dinner, Louise and Harald went for a long stroll along the lake. Their grief had made them irritable, as had the news that it would probably be a week before their son could be flown to Holland—less danger of infection. They asked me to join, but I declined and went my own way, uphill, circling back to the CHUV, wondering what I’d do if they didn’t let me into the ward.
The hospital was very quiet. All through the long corridor from the open lobby to ic, one endless stretch of piss, body lotion, and disinfectant fumes, I saw just one patient and a coupla nurses, who greeted me politely as I passed. I focused on my feet, a cursory upward glance only when strictly necessary, cuz the view out the panorama windows gave me the jitters. The mountains on the other side of the lake were dark shapes dissolving into the clouds like some weird atmospheric phenomenon, more menacing than ever before.
No trace of the Police Cantonale in Nick’s ward. Later, I heard they’d asked Nick some questions that afternoon—standard mountaineering deaths procedure. They’d scribbled a concluding report and split. Nick played ball and confirmed the mountain rescue’s conclusions.
Even in his state, Nick could figure out there’d be hell to pay if he said anything about what was really weighing on him.
Confusing memories, images of horrors, vague, like a distant echo . . .
(Dum-dum-dum duuumm . . . Roll credits.)
I slipped into his room undetected. There was my perfect prince, lying naked on the bed. The light blue sheets pulled back, a plastic tube coming out of his miserable, flaccid phallus, a young nurse with a full head of hair, dark, curly, leaning over him. My perfect mummified lover, molested by a young, attractive credit card perv with a cystoscopy fetish. Can you blame her? Chop off the head, stick the bod on a stanchion, and someone’d shell out a hundred thou for it and call it The Torso of Apollo.
Then I saw the tub of water, the washcloth, and the tube drip-dripping into a urine bag between his legs, and then the nurse saw me. She yelped with a start.
“Bonsoir,” I said.
Funny how people just don’t know how to react.
I said, “I sure am happy I didn’t catch Dr. Genet like this.” This was in French; same goes for everything else I’d say to Cécile, seeing as she could only speak a coupla words of English.
She seemed to relax a bit—just a tiddly tad—and looked at me with nervous, clear eyes. “You must be Sam.”
“You got it. How’d you know?”
She smiled, but avoided my eyes. “Nick told me about you. Cécile Métrailler.”
“Hello, Cécile.” I walked to the bed and shook her latex-gloved hand over my boyfriend’s naked body. “A man with those kinds of gloves on’s usually got other things on his mind.”
They say humor is a coping mechanism, but as an attempt to put Cécile at ease, it bombed. She gave a shy splutter, but quickly turned her head away and stuck an electric gun in Nick’s exposed ear.
Her edginess was rubbing off on me. Looking at that enswathed, out-for-the-count noggin got me all antsy, so I transferred my gaze to the compresses on the rest of his body. Biceps: check. Quads: check. Reps: until failure. Yep: plug his face with a slab of arm, plug his arm with a slab of thigh. Plastic surgery is shifting the scar to wherever it doesn’t matter. The human body as an all-inclusive DIY kit.
Thing is, a body like Nick’s had no wherever-it-doesn’t-matter.
Thing is, without a face, a body like that is worth jack shit.
I tore my gaze away from the bed and asked, “How’s he doing?”
“Sleeping like a baby. Temperature and blood pressure are stable. He’s not in pain.” First time Cécile looked at me longer than a nanosecond. “How are you doing?”
Shrug. Considered bullshitting. Said, “Bad.”
Don’t ask me why I was being candid with someone who’d been in my life less time than it takes to chug a tequila, but Cécile made some neurons in my brain dance and I liked her right off the bat. Sometimes you just feel it. Other place, other time, maybe we woulda been friends.
“It will be very difficult,” she said plainly. She handed me the washcloth. “Here. You probably want to wash him.”
I sure as hell didn’t, and Cécile sure as hell knew it, but she saw how far I kept away from the bed, saw me avoiding what I eventually had to face: this was Nick now; get used to it. Our lives would be defined by the moment the bandages came off and Nick’s irrevocably disfigured face would be unveiled. I dreaded it like a root canal. I kept seeing Dr. Genet turning those photos upside down and around again.
But worried as I was about whether I could deal with the impending display, I worried even more for Nick’s sake. The curse of being a beefcake is that it goes to your head. You become an addict. Gravity is your nemesis. Mirror, mirror, on the wall—one look and Nick’s a junkie in rehab.
I was terrified that my face would be the mirror and then that would be the end of our happily ever after.
So I relieved Cécile of the washcloth and washed him. Cleaned his body, every nook and cranny, which I knew like the back of my hand, every curve hiding its own memory. I’m pretty sure the act of cleaning cleansed something in me, too. I created a space for his imperfections and future scars, got to know them, tried to get acquainted, taking the edge off the horror waiting for us underneath the memory of his old face.
When I was done, Cécile finally trusted me enough to remove the folded note from her uniform pocket. She looked past me, checking the door, and said in a hushed voice, “He said to give this to you. It’s in Dutch, but I used Google Translate and it says he loves you.” She blushed. “Sorry. I was curious.”
I unfolded the note and read Nick’s claim that it wasn’t an accident.
The hospital room seemed to go mute. I suddenly noticed my heartbeat running rampant. When I looked up, I saw Cécile press her finger to her lips. I was stupefied; what I’d thought was edginess was in fact fear.
I thought, Dr. Genet.
“Listen, I’m on the late shift,” she said, currying a faux sense of comfort, “but how about coffee tomorrow morning? I know a nice place by the lake.”
5