The Light We Lost

I took a shaky breath. This was all too much. My fogged-up mind jumped to all the things you left behind. Would I have to deal with them too? For a moment I wished Darren were there with me; he’d know what to do. Or Kate. I decided I’d call Kate. But first I needed to see you. That was why I’d come. That was why I’d traveled so far.

“Thank you,” I said to the social worker. “But I just want to see him. Can I see him now?”

“Of course,” she said, standing and picking up my suitcase.

“We’ve got to be strong,” I muttered to the baby. Or maybe to myself. I followed Shoshana and Dr. Mizrahi out the door. Dr. Shamir turned in the other direction, saying he was available if I wanted to talk further.

I nodded and he left.

Then I stopped walking. “There is one thing,” I said, in the hallway.

Shoshana paused and looked at me. “Yes?”

I took another deep breath. I couldn’t believe I was asking this. “How far along does a pregnancy have to be before you can do a paternity test?”

Dr. Mizrahi had stopped too. Her gaze dropped briefly to my stomach before it returned to my face. “There’s a blood test that can be performed as early as eight weeks,” she said. “It can also tell the baby’s sex.”

I clutched the plastic bag tighter. The things you’d left behind. “Thank you,” I said.

And then Dr. Mizrahi led us in to see you.

lxxvii

I walked into your room and had to steady myself against the door frame. The nausea returned and I battled it back.

There was a breathing tube jammed down your throat. Your lips were dry and cracked around it. Your head was bandaged, and the soft area below your closed eyes was bruised purple. Someone had wrapped your left arm in a splint, from elbow to wrist. There were tubes and machines beeping everywhere. But it was you. You were there. Your chest was rising and falling. You were alive. I knew what the doctors had just said, but I ignored it.

“Gabe,” I breathed. The room smelled metallic and medicinal, like antiseptic mixed with sweat and blood. I knelt next to your bed and took your hand. Your fingers felt reassuringly warm. I held them to my face, wishing you would trace my lips with your thumb, wishing I could hear your voice.

I thought about the last conversation we had. The one where we said we loved each other. The one where I told you to stay in Jerusalem, not to make me choose. “I take it back,” I said to you. “I didn’t mean it. Just come back. Come back, Gabe. Please. Don’t leave me.”

Nothing happened. You didn’t move. Not a twitch, not a blink.

A sob escaped my chest and then I couldn’t stop them from coming. My throat constricted. My ribs ached. My body shook. I collapsed onto the floor.

I don’t know when she’d entered the room, but Shoshana was at my side, her hand on my shoulder. “Mrs. Maxwell,” she said. “Lucy.”

I looked at her instead of at you. I tried to stop the body-racking sobs. She lifted me up off the floor.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said. “Is there anyone who can be here with you?”

I shook my head. “No one,” I choked out. I thought about Kate, about asking her if she could get on a plane that night. She would come if I asked. I took a quivering breath.

“It’s going to be okay,” Shoshana said, as she steered me out of your room and back down the hall. “Visiting hours are almost over. Why don’t you try to get some rest? You don’t have to make any decisions today.”

“Okay,” I said, my voice as shaky as I felt.

“Do you need a car to take you to a hotel? Or to Mr. Samson’s apartment?” Shoshana asked.

I’d booked a hotel, but I thought about the keys to your apartment in the plastic bag. I had your address in my contacts, where you typed it while we were in bed together. I felt like I had to go there. “A car,” I said. “That would be great.”

Shoshana nodded and came back a few minutes later with my suitcase. “Let me take you outside to meet the driver.” She handed me a card. “I don’t usually do this, but here’s my private line. If you need anything, please call. I’ve added my mobile number on the back.”

“Thank you,” I said, slipping the card into my handbag.

She picked my suitcase back up and I followed her through a revolving gate to the parking lot. A thought flashed through my mind quickly, gone as fast as it entered: If this was fate’s way of granting my wish, making me not have to choose between you and Darren, then I didn’t want to live in this world either.

What do you think, Gabe? Was it your choice to report from Gaza? To take those pictures when you did, where you did, how you did? Did your choices lead you here? Or was this preordained? Your fated end? Our fated end? I have my own thoughts about this, but I wish I could hear yours.

lxxviii

The taxi driver took me down some winding streets, trying to give me a bit of a tour as we went. It was the first time I’d ever been to Israel, and I knew I should have been paying more attention, appreciating the significance of where I was, but I was still in a fog. Images of you in that hospital bed flared in my brain. Dr. Shamir saying the words “Mr. Samson is brain-dead.” Don’t think about it, I told myself. Focus on what you’re doing now. Stay strong. Think about his apartment. Would it seem familiar? Would it feel like home? Would I find something out about you that I didn’t know before—and wouldn’t want to know now? For a moment, I wondered if I should go to the hotel after all, but we were already on the way. And to be honest, I wanted to see where you’d lived. I wanted to surround myself with you.

“Ah, Rehavia,” the taxi driver had said, when I gave him your address. “Very nice.”

He was right. Your neighborhood was lovely—inviting and calm. I concentrated on the buildings we passed instead of what I’d just seen and heard at the hospital. I imagined what it would have been like if I’d said, Yes, I’ll come to Jerusalem with you. Would I have shopped at that market? Had coffee at that little store? Would we have enjoyed being together, or would everything have been tainted? Through the fog and numbness, I felt a pang for Violet and Liam. I’d been gone for less than a day, and I missed them already. I wished I could hold them, feel their little bodies warm against mine, their arms wrapped around my neck. I never would have been able to leave them.

When we stopped in front of your building, I took my bags and stood at the entrance. There was a wooden door behind a metal gate, both set into a beautiful stone archway. I would’ve chosen a building like this too. It looked solid, comforting, like it had protected families, kept them safe, for centuries. I fumbled in the plastic bag for your keys, and then tried a few before I found the one that opened the gate and then the door. I took the stairs to the third floor, and then struggled again to find the right key.

Inside, by myself, all of a sudden I felt like an intruder. I’d forgotten that you’d only been in Jerusalem briefly before you were in Gaza. And that even when you were here, you were working like crazy. Your apartment hadn’t really been set up yet. There were boxes of books opened but not unpacked. A few photographs framed and leaning against walls, but not hung. There were rugs patterned in bold colors, like I’d seen at the bazaars in Turkey. A brown couch. A wooden desk piled with electronics and wires. A chair. I imagined you working in that chair, at your computer, cropping, adjusting color saturation, increasing contrast, the way you did when we lived together. I did my best to think of you here, and not in the hospital. You were alive, you were doing what you loved, you were smiling. In my mind at least.

I pushed open the door to your bedroom and saw, folded on the foot of your bed, the same blanket I threw at you the night you told me you were leaving. I picked it up and touched it to my cheek. It still smelled faintly of you. There was a nightstand with a copy of All the Light We Cannot See. I sat down on your bed, noticing a piece of paper that marked your place. Page 254. That’s the farthest you’ll ever read in that book. You’ll never finish it. Your life was interrupted, cut short. A film that snapped on its reel and wouldn’t get to its natural end. There is so much you left undone. So much you’ll never complete, never see, never know.

“I’ll finish the book,” I said out loud. “I’ll read it for you, Gabe.”

Then I looked at your bookmark. It was the receipt from our afternoon at Faces & Names. I traced the date with my fingertips. Even if I’d known that was the last time I’d ever see you, I don’t think there’s anything I would have done differently. I still would’ve pressed my body against yours in the bar. I still would’ve made love to you over and over in your hotel room. And I still would’ve told you I couldn’t come with you to Jerusalem.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if this would have happened if I’d said yes. Would you have been more careful, if I was home, waiting for you? Would you have been more careful if you’d known there was a baby that might be ours?

I touched my stomach. Did we conceive a child that afternoon?

Numbly, I wandered back into your living room and then into the kitchen. The refrigerator was almost empty—mustard, a few bottles of beer. There was a bag of coffee beans and a half-empty box of chai in the cabinet, along with two bags of pretzels, one unopened, the other closed with a binder clip. I didn’t know you liked pretzels that much. Why didn’t I know that about you?