Only Children by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online Page A

say while Eric automatically followed Nina into the cab. The leader of the teenagers had turned to face the taxi, ready to challenge it. Gomez shouted and waved his hands disdainfully at the kid with the switchblade. The knife bearer remained in a melodramatic crouch, still pointing the blade where Gomez had stood earlier, ignoring the back and forth of Gomez’s angry pacing.
    “Trouble?” the driver asked them, staring at the scene. “Should we do something?”
    Nina leaned across Eric and rolled his window down. “We’re all right, Gomez! Thank you! Go to sleep!”
    The leader of the kids, his face as still as the impassive mask of a sentinel, moved his lips. “Good luck,” he said.
    Gomez seemed to pay no attention to Nina. He continued to lecture the switchblade holder. “What you mean making all this noise at night? People are sleeping!”
    “We can go,” Nina concluded. The driver nodded and pulled away, taking the turn at the corner without slowing, so the cab swung out wide. Nina toppled into Eric’s lap. She smiled wanly at him.
    And then her face scrunched up in pain. “Here comes another one,” she said.

2
    D IANE WAS AFRAID . She studied the bubbles in the IV line, telling herself they couldn’t be air pockets that would enter her vein, travel to her heart, and stop it—but fearing anyway that they might be. And she hurt. A pain that had begun as a dull ache was now intense, pulsing from the base of her skull to her forehead, as if someone were trying to pry it off.
    She complained. Slowly, very slowly, her complaints were answered. The headache (what a diagnostic understatement of her agony) was a side effect of her epidural, she was told. Sometimes during surgery it moved around, becoming, in effect, a spinal tap, and led to some sort of fluid movement that caused a severe headache. They didn’t want to give her a potent painkiller; she got a part Tylenol, part codeine tablet instead. That merely reduced the wrenching, stabbing pain to a bruised, throbbing hurt—a taunting reminder of life without the top of her head coming off, thereby making the resumption of intense pain more dismaying. She always seemed to need the next dose of Tylenol/codeine an hour before she was allowed to have it.
    And then, any movement of the lower half of her torso was scary. Sometimes she suspected the incision in her belly wasn’t closed and her insides were spilling out. Usually her body sent a sharp order of distress, freezing her in place, wincing until the wave of nauseating weakness, soreness, and ache was overwhelmed by the oppressive pounding in her skull. It was then she felt grateful for the headache.
    She hated the television in her room. It was mounted above the molding, way up in the air, positioned for a platform bed that hadn’t been built. The location gave a better view of its dirty plastic bottom than the broadcast. When off, the blank screen appeared to be a gray that she speculated was a layer of dust. When she turned it on, the picture looked old, the colors from another era, the shape excessively curved, reminding her of being alone on Saturday mornings watching farm programs while her mother slept late.
    She dreaded visitors and phone calls. At her request, Peter had turned off the phone and told everyone but Diane’s mother and his parents and stepparents not to come for a few days. But Diane also resented the absence of company. Every desire and instinct were accompanied by an equally strong reluctance and revulsion.
    She felt deserted and betrayed by the world. Her doctor had refused to allow her to lie in with Byron until she felt stronger. She didn’t argue or even disagree. Still, it wasn’t her choice. Her baby had been carried off and was delivered only to be fed (or failing to feed) with an immediate announcement by the nurse of when he would be re-collected. Even her brief times alone with Byron made her aware of her failures. Byron seemed uninterested in eating, so she was