Page 673 - A Little Life: A Novel

hand, his normal right—as above him Andy speaks. They have been
watching him for weeks—Sanjay has been keeping track of the days he’s
seen him eat at the office, Richard has been entering his apartment to check

his refrigerator for food. “We measure weight loss in grades,” he hears
Andy saying. “A loss of one to ten percent of your body weight is Grade
One. A loss of eleven to twenty percent is Grade Two. Grade Two is when
we consider putting you on a feeding tube. You know this, Jude, because
it’s happened to you before. And I can tell by looking at you that you’re at
Grade Two—at least.” Andy talks and talks, and he thinks he begins to cry,
but he is unable to produce tears. Everything has gone so wrong, he thinks;

how did everything go so wrong? How has he forgotten so completely who
he was when he was with Willem? It is as if that person has died along with
Willem, and what he is left with is his elemental self, someone he has never
liked, someone so incapable of occupying the life he has, the life he has
somehow made for himself, in spite of himself.
Finally he lifts his head and sees Harold staring at him, sees that Harold

is actually crying, silently, looking and looking at him. “Harold,” he says,
although Andy is still talking, “release me. Release me from my promise to
you. Don’t make me do this anymore. Don’t make me go on.”
But no one releases him: not Harold, not anyone. He is instead captured
and taken to the hospital, and there, at the hospital, he begins to fight. My
last fight, he thinks, and he fights harder than he ever has, as hard as he had
as a child in the monastery, becoming the monster they always told him he

was, yowling and spitting in Harold’s and Andy’s faces, ripping the IV from
his hand, thrashing his body on the bed, trying to scratch at Richard’s arms,
until finally a nurse, cursing, sticks him with a needle and he is sedated.
He wakes with his wrists strapped to the bed, with his prostheses gone,
with his clothes gone as well, with a press of cotton against his collarbone
under which he knows a catheter has been inserted. The same thing all over

again, he thinks, the same, the same, the same.
But this time it isn’t the same. This time he is given no choices. This
time, he is put on a feeding tube, which punctures through his abdomen and
into his stomach. This time, he is made to go back and see Dr. Loehmann.
This time, he is going to be watched, every mealtime: Richard will watch
him eat breakfast. Sanjay will watch him eat lunch and, if he’s at the office
late, dinner. Harold will watch him on the weekends. He isn’t allowed to go

to the bathroom until an hour after he’s finished each meal. He must see