Page 580 - A Little Life: A Novel

it; I do. I just worry about you; I sometimes think I care more about your
being alive than you do.”
He shivers, hearing this. “No, Willem,” he says. “I mean—maybe, at one

point. But not now.”
“Then prove it to me,” Willem says, after a silence.
“I will,” he says.
January; February. He is busier than he has ever been. Willem is
rehearsing a play. March: Two new wounds open up, both on his right leg.
Now the pain is excruciating; now he never leaves his wheelchair except to
shower and go to the bathroom and dress and undress. It has been a year,

more, since he has had a reprieve from the pain in his feet. And yet every
morning when he wakes, he places them on the floor and is, for a second,
hopeful. Maybe today he will feel better. Maybe today the pain will have
abated. But he never does; it never does. And still he hopes. April: His
birthday. The play’s run begins. May: Back come the night sweats, the
fever, the shaking, the chills, the delirium. Back he goes to the Hotel

Contractor. Back goes the catheter, this time into the left side of his chest.
But there is a change this time: this time the bacteria is different; this time,
he will need an antibiotic drip every eight hours, not every twenty-four.
Back comes Patrizia, now two times a day: at six a.m., at Greene Street; at
two p.m. at Rosen Pritchard; and at ten p.m. again at Greene Street, a night
nurse, Yasmin. For the first time in their friendship, he sees only one
performance of Willem’s play: his days are so segmented, so controlled by

his medication, that he is simply unable to go a second time. For the first
time since this cycle began a year ago, he feels himself tumbling toward
despair; he feels himself giving up. He has to remind himself he must prove
to Willem that he wants to remain alive, when all he really wants to do is
stop. Not because he is depressed, but because he is exhausted. At the
conclusion of one appointment, Andy looks at him with a strange

expression and tells him that he’s not sure if he’s realized, but it’s been a
month since he last cut himself, and he thinks about this. Andy is right. He
has been too tired, too consumed to think about cutting.
“Well,” Andy says. “I’m glad. But I’m sorry this is why you’ve stopped,
Jude.”
“I am, too,” he says. They are both quiet, both, he fears, nostalgic for the
days when cutting was his most serious problem.