Page 70 - A Little Life: A Novel

In the taxi—Jude giving the driver the address in that same crushed,
muted voice—he at last gave in to consciousness, and saw that Jude was
still holding the towel. “Why did you bring your towel?” he asked.

“I told you—I cut myself.”
“But—is it bad?”
Jude shrugged, and Willem noticed for the first time that his lips had
gone a strange color, a not-color, although maybe that was the streetlights,
which slapped and slid across his face, bruising it yellow and ocher and a
sickly larval white as the cab pushed north. Jude leaned his head against the
window and closed his eyes, and it was then that Willem felt the beginnings

of nausea, of fear, although he was unable to articulate why, only that he
was in a cab heading uptown and something had happened, and he didn’t
know what but that it was something bad, that he wasn’t comprehending
something important and vital, and that the damp warmth of a few hours
ago had vanished and the world had reverted to its icy harshness, its raw
end-of-year cruelty.

Andy’s office was on Seventy-eighth and Park, near Malcolm’s parents’
house, and it was only once they were inside, in the true light, that Willem
saw that the dark pattern on Jude’s shirt was blood, and that the towel had
become sticky with it, almost varnished, its tiny loops of cotton matted
down like wet fur. “I’m sorry,” Jude said to Andy, who had opened the door
to let them in, and when Andy unwrapped the towel, all Willem saw was
what looked like a choking of blood, as if Jude’s arm had grown a mouth

and was vomiting blood from it, and with such avidity that it was forming
little frothy bubbles that popped and spat as if in excitement.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Jude,” said Andy, and steered him back to the
examining room, and Willem sat down to wait. Oh god, he thought, oh god.
But it was as if his mind was a bit of machinery caught uselessly in a
groove, and he couldn’t think beyond those two words. It was too bright in

the waiting room, and he tried to relax, but he couldn’t for the phrase
beating its rhythm like a heartbeat, thudding through his body like a second
pulse: Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.
He waited a long hour before Andy called his name. Andy was eight
years older than he, and they had known him since their sophomore year,
when Jude had had an episode so sustained that the three of them had
finally decided to take him to the hospital connected with the university,

where Andy had been the resident on call. He had been the only doctor Jude