Page 593 - A Little Life: A Novel

fever, who had last opened his eyes four days ago, the day after he had
gotten out of surgery.
“He’s going to be fine, Willem,” Harold kept babbling at him, Harold

who was in general even more of a worrier than Willem himself had
become. “He’s going to be fine. Andy said so.” On and on Harold went,
parroting back to Willem everything that he had already heard Andy say,
until finally he had snapped at him, “Jesus, Harold, give it a fucking break.
Do you believe everything Andy says? Does he look like he’s getting
better? Does he look like he’s going to be fine?” And then he had seen
Harold’s face change, his expression of pleading, frantic desperation, the

face of an old, hopeful man, and he had been punched with remorse and had
gone over and held him. “I’m sorry,” he said to Harold, Harold who had
already lost one son, who was trying to reassure himself that he wouldn’t
lose another. “I’m sorry, Harold, I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m being an
asshole.”
“You’re not an asshole, Willem,” Harold had said. “But you can’t tell me

he’s not going to get better. You can’t tell me that.”
“I know,” he said. “Of course he’s going to get better,” he said, sounding
like Harold, Harold echoing Harold to Harold. “Of course he is.” But inside
of him, he felt the beetley scrabble of fear: of course there was no of course.
There never had been. Of course had vanished eighteen months ago. Of
course had left their lives forever.
He had always been an optimist, and yet in those months, his optimism

deserted him. He had canceled all of his projects for the rest of the year, but
as the fall dragged on, he wished he had them; he wished he had something
to distract himself. By the end of September, Jude was out of the hospital,
and yet he was so thin, so frail, that Willem had been scared to touch him,
scared to even look at him, scared to see the way that his cheekbones were
now so pronounced that they cast permanent shadows around his mouth,

scared to see the way he could watch Jude’s pulse beating in the scooped-
out hollow of his throat, as if there was something living inside of him that
was trying to kick its way out. He could feel Jude trying to comfort him,
trying to make jokes, and that made him even more scared. On the few
occasions he left the apartment—“You have to,” Richard had told him,
flatly, “you’re going to go crazy otherwise, Willem”—he was tempted to
turn his phone off, because every time it chirped and he saw it was Richard

(or Malcolm, or Harold, or Julia, or JB, or Andy, or the Henry Youngs, or