Six
Tovah
I TRY TO TAKE A deep breath, but I can’t fully fill my lungs. The air in the clinic is thin, sharp with disinfectant. One day I’ll work in a place like this—unless my test comes back positive. Then maybe I won’t get a chance to. I suppose I’ll spend most of my life here either way, as a surgeon or as a patient. Will it always feel like it’s suffocating me?
Aba rubs my back while we wait. “Hakol yihyeh b’seder,” he says, trying to reassure me. “Whatever happens, we’re going to figure it out together. Okay, Tov?”
When we got to the clinic, they put us in separate rooms. Said it was customary to give out results one by one so each person had ample time to process on their own first. Aba stayed with me, and Ima went down the hall with Adina.
I balance my elbows on my knees, my heart pounding so loudly I’m certain Aba can hear it. He always brags to his friends that I’m going to be a surgeon. “One Siegel will finally become a doctor,” he’ll say, because he failed to finish a PhD program in computer science. Genetics might seem like an obvious career choice for me, but I want to fix people who can be fixed. Who can get better. This right here is all too claustrophobic.
Aba tries to distract me with Nirvana trivia, something he used to do when I was little. I had such a sharp memory that he got a kick out of quizzing me on album track listings despite Ima’s complaints that some of the songs weren’t appropriate for a kid. Nirvana’s music is raw and unapologetic, like someone turned Cobain’s brain inside out and the lyrics were the thoughts he couldn’t tell anyone else. Back when I had more free time, Aba and I spent hours listening to vinyl albums and watching documentaries and old concert footage. I couldn’t believe he’d seen them in person, both because I couldn’t imagine my L.L. Bean–clad father in a mosh pit and Nirvana seemed more mythological to me than tangible. Adina may have gotten a pricey viola for her bat mitzvah, but my gift was so much better: the ticket to that show Aba went to, the one still hanging above my desk. A connection to my dad and the music that Adina would never understand. Something entirely mine.
“Original band name?” Aba says now.
“Too easy. Skid Row.”
“What are the only two songs Cobain doesn’t have the sole writing credit on?”
“ ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and . . . ‘Heart-Shaped Box’?”
“First one’s right. The second’s ‘Scentless Apprentice.’ ”
“Right. Right. I knew that.” My leg is jiggling. I hate sitting still like this.
Once music was something Adina and I shared too: finding a song we both liked, staying up all night choreographing a dance that we promised to perform at the school talent show, though we were always too shy to actually follow through. Every so often one of us would strike a pose from the dance, and the other would burst into laughter. Once music brought us together, and now it’s another thing dividing us.
Our fight on Yom Kippur is still fresh. Adina’s not the first person to question how I reconcile faith with science. History is filled with scientists who were also people of faith: Ada Yonath, an Israeli woman who won a Nobel Prize for chemistry; Max Born, who helped develop quantum mechanics; and little-known theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.
God did not cause Ima’s illness. God has limits, humans have free will, and the natural world isn’t ruled by a higher power. After Ima was diagnosed, I realized blaming God would only cause me anguish. I had the power to decide how to confront that tragedy. I could turn it into something good—and I did, with my zeal for Johns Hopkins, my 4.0, my two-page single-spaced résumé. If I test positive, then I must be meant to accomplish something great in my shortened life.
Someone knocks on the door, and I spring to my feet.
Dr. Simon, the neurologist, and Maureen, the genetic counselor, enter the room together. Maureen had Adi and me come up with a plan for testing negative and a plan for testing positive. She had to know we weren’t at risk of harming ourselves. If I tested positive, I’d go to counseling every week and join a support group. I’d do everything doctors told me to do, appointments and supplements and experimental meds. If I tested negative, Maureen said it was perfectly natural to experience guilt. I was prepared to deal with that, too.
“Tovah. Matt,” Maureen says to my father and me. “You don’t have to stand up, unless you’re more comfortable that way.”
“Oh.” I sit back down. Cross and uncross my legs. Cross them again.
Dr. Simon and Maureen take seats across from us. “How have you been doing?” Dr. Simon asks, tucking a dark curl behind her ear.
“Longest three weeks of my life,” I say with a weak smile.
“I’ve heard that one before. I’m sorry. I wish this process were a bit speedier.”
My smile turns into something more like a grimace, a hard line across my face. I wonder what it was like when Aba sat in a room like this with Ima. If it was a tragedy right away, or a relief to finally be able to name her symptoms.
“Do you want us to cut right to the chase?” Dr. Simon asks.
“Yes. Please.” My heart hammers in my throat. I have my two plans. Whatever happens, I can deal with it.
I hope.
The moments before the doctor’s next sentence span eons. Glaciers melt and entire species go extinct. I’m certain she’ll tell me what I’ve only let myself obsess about through research and in my nightmares.
“You will not develop Huntington’s disease. You tested negative.”