Page 28 of The Immortalists

Simon grabs a towel. “Nothing.”

“Like hell it’s nothing.” Robert puts one hand on Simon’s shoulder and pulls the towel off. “Oh my God.”

They stare at it together for seconds. Then Simon hangs his head.

“Rob,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to us.” Then, madly: “There’s a show tonight. We have to get to the theater.”

“No, baby,” says Robert. “That’s not where we need to go,” and in minutes, he’s called them a cab.

9.

There are twelve beds in Simon’s ward at San Francisco General. The swinging door that leads inside has a laminated sign—MASK GOWN GLOVES PUNCTURE PROOF NEEDLE BOX IN ROOM NO PREGNANT WOMEN—and a smaller sign that reads No Flowers.

Klara and Robert stay overnight in Simon’s room, sleeping in chairs. His bed is separated from another by a thin white curtain. Simon doesn’t like to look at his roommate, a former chef whose bones now protrude; he can’t keep anything down. Within days, the bed is empty again, the partition drifting in the breeze.

Robert says, “You have to tell your family.”

Simon shakes his head. “They can’t know I went like this.”

“But you haven’t gone,” says Klara. Her lap is covered with pamphlets—When a Friend Has Cancer; Affection, Not Rejection—and her eyes are slick. “You’re right here, with us.”

“Yeah.” Simon’s throat feels tight: the glands in his neck are swollen. One night, when Robert and Klara leave to get takeout, Simon scoots to the edge of the bed and reaches for the phone. He’s ashamed to realize he doesn’t even have Daniel’s number, but Klara left a pile of belongings on her chair, including a slender red address book. Daniel picks up on the fifth ring.

“Dan,” says Simon. His voice is raspy and his left foot twitches, but he floods with gratitude.

There is a long pause before Daniel speaks. “Who is this?”

“It’s me, Daniel.” He clears his throat. “It’s Simon.”

“Simon.”

Another pause, which stretches so long Simon knows it won’t end unless he fills it.

“I’m sick,” he says.

“You’re sick.” A beat. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

Daniel speaks stiffly, as if to a stranger. How long has it been since they’ve talked? Simon tries to imagine how Daniel’s face might look. He’s twenty-four years old.

“What are you doing?” Simon asks—anything to keep his brother on the phone.

“I’m in medical school. I just got home from class.”

Simon pictures it: doors whooshing open and shut, young people walking with backpacks. The thought comforts him so deeply that he feels almost able to fall asleep. With his nerve pain and his twitching, he spends most nights awake.

“Simon?” Daniel asks, softening. “Is there anything I can do?”

“No,” Simon says, “there’s nothing.” He wonders if Daniel is relieved when he hangs up.

• • •

June 13th. Two of the men on Simon’s hall died in the night. His new roommate—a Hmong boy in glasses who keeps asking for his mother—can’t be older than seventeen.

“There was a woman,” Simon tells Robert, perched beside him as always. “She told me when I’d die.”

“A woman?” Robert scoots closer. “What woman, baby? A nurse?”

Simon is light-headed. They’ve been giving him morphine for the nerve pain. “No, not a nurse—a woman. She came to New York. When I was a kid.”