Page 392 - A Little Life: A Novel

until at last Luke stroked his hair. “I love you, Jude,” he said, and after a
moment, he replied as he always did—“I love you, too, Brother Luke”—
and they drove away.

He was the same as those boys, but he was really not: he was different.
He would never be one of them. He would never be someone who would
run across a field while his mother called after him to come have a snack
before he played so he wouldn’t get tired. He would never have his bed in
the cabin. He would never be clean again. The boys were playing on the
field, and he was driving with Brother Luke to the doctor, the kind of doctor
he knew from his previous visits to other doctors would be somehow

wrong, somehow not a good person. He was as far away from them as he
was from the monastery. He was so far gone from himself, from who he had
hoped to be, that it was as if he was no longer a boy at all but something
else entirely. This was his life now, and there was nothing he could do about
it.
At the doctor’s office, Luke leaned over and held him. “We’re going to

have fun tonight, just you and me,” he said, and he nodded, because there
was nothing else he could do. “Let’s go,” said Luke, releasing him, and he
got out of the car, and followed Brother Luke across the parking lot and
toward the brown door that was already opening to let them inside.

The first memory: a hospital room. He knew it was a hospital room even
before he opened his eyes because he could smell it, because its quality of
silence—a silence that wasn’t really silent—was familiar. Next to him:
Willem, asleep in a chair. Then he had been confused—why was Willem

here? He was supposed to be away, somewhere. He remembered: Sri Lanka.
But he wasn’t. He was here. How strange, he thought. I wonder why he’s
here? That was the first memory.
The second memory: the same hospital room. He turned and saw Andy
sitting on the side of his bed, Andy, unshaven and awful-looking, giving
him a strange, unconvincing smile. He felt Andy squeeze his hand—he

hadn’t realized he had a hand until he felt Andy squeeze it—and had tried to
squeeze back, but couldn’t. Andy had looked up at someone. “Nerve
damage?” he heard Andy ask. “Maybe,” said this other person, the person
he couldn’t see, “but if we’re lucky, it’s more likely it’s—” And he had
closed his eyes and fallen back asleep. That was the second memory.