The Fate of Droplets (v)

I made peanut butter brownies today, but they aren't exactly how I want them. That means, no recipe until I get them right. This is the first attempt at desserts, but I can't help but try and make them with whole wheat and brown sugar instead of their paler counterparts. I finished the draft of The Fate of Droplets--finally--and will post it bit by bit over the next few days. I need to go over it, but it is a relief to finish something that has taken up so much of my thought-space for so long. Enjoy part v, I believe it is the longest section and you might notice some tone changes which I need to work out with revision. That sort of thing is the biggest difficulty I have with longer pieces, I just get tired of writing the narration the same way.

...

The bell on the door twittered when I awkwardly held the door for George at the Chinese restaurant. It was early afternoon as I had slept well through the morning following Jessica's party and the settling of Henry in his apartment. I was groggy, but the ride home had refreshed my senses before I fell asleep.
“The security guards at work are a riot. They have no clue what research goes on and they don't know how to make heads or tails of anything we ask them most of the time. It would be the easiest thing in the world to sneak in and play around.”
“I hope you're not planning anything.”
“Me? No. I don't need to. But I do sometimes play around with them when I'm there late.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I just suggest that certain chemicals or experiments are highly dangerous or that they ought to ask in a certain way, with that tone that means, 'Otherwise, you might not be able to have children.'”
“That sounds pretty cruel.”
“Only if they are sharp enough to play along. Usually, they don't care and just wander off.”
The maitre d' quietly guided as to a table along the street-facing window, where bright sunshine lit the laminated menus in the dim restaurant. We requested water and tea of our waiter, who then rushed off for them. After we sat, a small quiet ensued, which I then poked with a change in topic.
“You know my friend Henry the Buddhist?” This is often how I introduce him because I feel that the stories about him ought to make more sense if the audience knows he is a Buddhist, but it inevitably comes out like a title rather than a description.
“We haven't met, but you've brought him up before.”
“I think you should meet him. Your, um, pursuits are similar but involve different avenues. I think you two would have good conversations.” George nodded absently, smiling at the waiter who brought in tea, which was poured into each of our little ceramic teacups. “Well,” and here I began to hesitate, because this might still lie in the private space between friends, not yet open to sharing with everyone yet, “he and I went to a party last night but he sort of had an... episode. I don't know what to call it exactly, but it was very strange.” I sipped the tea and George watched me acutely, as if wondering if this might be one of my long, dawdling stories or turn quickly into an intriguing one. “Do you have much knowledge of psychological events, when someone very quickly becomes someone else?”
“Do you mean a fugue?” George asked perking up.
“Maybe, what is that?”
“Well, it has to do with becoming dissociated with earlier memories and manifesting a new persona.”
“Like amnesia?”
“It is one form of amnesia, yes. Someone wanders off and starts a new life for a few days or weeks, then the memories from before return and she abandons the new life for the old.”
I thought on this, chewing over it and piecing together how Henry had acted. I smelled and then sipped the jasmine tea.
“I don't know if that is it, but it might help make sense of how Henry acted last night. So after a couple of hours at the party—he came anxious, but came anyway—Mona tells me he's acting strangely, so I go find him and we walk home. The whole time he sounds like he's talking to himself very quietly, like he's somewhere unfamiliar and quickly keeping notes. At one point, it felt like he was receiving a broadcast from far away, and all his body was was a radio.”
“Or a relay station,” George chimed.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, if the message wasn't for you, and it wasn't for Henry, then maybe he was just picking it up to send it somewhere else, like an NPR broadcast out of New York getting picked up and played nearly simultaneously across the country.”
“You're worrying me.”
“Sorry. It just sounded like a relay because it wasn't all that clear and you couldn't decipher it, maybe someone else could.”
The waiter returned with a pad of paper and we ordered; George the kung-pao chicken and I snow pea and water chestnut stir fry. I waited for him to leave before continuing. Talking about Henry and how he had acted embarrassed me, or maybe frightened me. It is hard to tell now.
“I don't have much more to say. Last night, we walked back to his place until he calmed down and I put him to bed. I didn't leave right away, but waited till I thought he had fallen asleep.”
“Have you talked to him since?”
“No. I planned on calling him today, but woke up just before you called.”
“I noticed,” George smiled when she said it. “So things didn't go anywhere with Mona?”
“No, I mean, yes. I think so, but nothing happened because I left early with Henry.” I blushed before adding, “I drank a little too much. Jessica's brother made drinks and they had some fantastic whiskey, which I just can't afford and I drank too much.”
“You seem fine now.”
“I suppose I am. I just don't like to slip out of my own control.”
“You helped Henry when he needed it.”
“Well, I don't know if I did. I think I should have helped him earlier, that I should have paid more attention to him. He was so hesitant about coming, maybe my excitement for seeing Mona got in the way.”
“Don't beat yourself up. You got Henry into bed, what more could you have been asked to do?”
“Maybe I just missed something earlier. I feel like I missed something crucial by not paying attention to Henry, that his episode might not have gotten so intense.”
“I know that it is hard to predict or determine a fugue state, but they can be really disruptive. It doesn't sound like that is what happened, but whatever did happen probably had more to do with what is going on inside Henry's head, not with you or whatever happened at the party.”
We began to shift to lighter topics, small recollections of parties here and there. I thought of the strange event on the patio with Thomas, but did not bring it up. That conversation had continued to feel too intoxicated, too confounded with elements of the evening of which I could not make sense. Our food came and we shared a little bit, though George was not much for vegetables. We sat there, sipping tea and enjoying the space for some time. We spoke of work and classes, I chatted more on Mona and the party, but George mostly laughed at how unhinged my memories were of the night before. They gradually slipped back in at the edges, but I did not push them anywhere.
As early afternoon slipped into mid-afternoon, we left and were preparing to say goodbye when my phone rang. The number was unknown and I answered with hesitancy. It was the hospital calling.
“Sir, we have a friend of yours here who has been asking for you.”
“A friend? Who?”
“A Mister Henry Jenson.”
“What happened? Can I come see him?”
“He would like that very much. It seems late last night he was hit by a car near his home--”
“What time? When was he hit?”
“At about three in the morning, sir.”
“I'll be there as soon as I can.”
“Thank you, sir. Just ask the receptionist for directions. I'll inform her of your arrival.”
I looked pleadingly at George, “Can you give me a ride? Henry's in the hospital.”
“Of course,” and with that, we hurried to her car and sped to the hospital. I was concerned and thought that I should have asked more questions; “How is he?,” “Is anything broken?,” and “What's his treatment?” Instead, I sat, staring out the window quietly, imagining the sound of the door shutting behind me and the loud clamber of footfalls as someone ran down the street.
I hardly noticed that we had parked, received directions from reception, and were in the elevator up four floors when the bell dinged and George and I stepped out, glancing for the appropriate sign. The on-hall nurse met me at the counter.
“He is doing fine, some hairline fractures that ought to heal if he stays off of them, and some mean looking bruises that will clear up on their own.” She sighed and then looked George in the eye, then me, “He's excitable. I don't know what to make of it, but it is all I can do to give him a sedative so he wouldn't run down the hall. One nurse thought he'd belong more in psych observation, but we should be able to discharge him today.”
“Anything else we should know?” I asked.
“Just keep him calm if you can.”
“We'll try,” I added, smilingly uncertainly, hoping that he would make more sense than he did after the party the night before. In his room, I heard him madly scribbling and stepped in quietly, hoping to gauge him before he noticed us. His attention was rapt in a yellow, lined notebook with half of its pages already flipped back over the binding. Studying him, I could see the sharp lines in his hand as the pen ran again and again over the pages, faster than I thought him possible. Henry had always been calm of demeanor and slow to act, as if something might change suddenly; but now, all his energy poured out of him into those pages and I felt, if subtly, frightened for him.
“Hey Henry, how are you?” I asked, stepping up to him and resting my hand on the foot of his bed.
“Lex!” He looked up, startled and shaking. “I have so much, so very much to tell you. Thank you for getting me home, I was in the worst of it then. I just got to that point writing. They won't let me leave yet, but I have to speak with Brother James.” He spoke quickly, swallowing some smaller words here and there, mashing together other words into long, breathless amalgamations. “It feels a bit like a dream, a bit like a nightmare, but it all happened and I've come back! Brother James never suggested that I would come back. You would think that the droplet stays lost, but here I am, jarred back to the present! I am so happy you came, though I wish you had shown up a few hours ago.”
“Henry, calm down. I can't keep up with you. You're worrying the nurses, too.”
“They'll be fine. I'm something else. To think, if they even knew, if they had any idea, they would just break down. A weaker spirit, someone with less training, would maybe not come back, just stay lost out there, in there, wherever it was.”
“Henry, what are you talking about?” Here, George stepped up and began taking stock of the thin, bedraggled man in the bed, two empty notebooks next to him and his present quickly running out of space. Every few moments he would jot down further scrawl and flip the page. His speech—its speed and intensity—surprised me and my worry, once typical and subtle, grew stronger and hinted of accents of the truly bizarre. My mind raced when he brought up Brother James, of the conversation the two had had, and what he might mean about going somewhere. I thought, surprised and slightly angry, that he was recording some sort of alien abduction, but before I could think too much, he plunged back into his monologue.
“I would never have believed it, that Brother James absolutely meant 'off the window.' How absurd is that? He knew the difficulty and intensity of leaving the pane, but I may be the first to return. Everything feels tight and cornered, like a glove now too small with a new winter. You're here, though, and you can help me.” He looked again at George.
“Hello. I'm Georgia, or George, just George. Nice to meet you,” She said, leaning in and offering Henry her hand. He saw it, almost examined it, before setting down his pen and shaking it. Henry set down her hand and peered at George, then at me, confounded by what he saw there, seeing us almost like foreigners or idiots; we were obviously dumb to his meanings.
“What are you thinking, Alexis?”
“Henry,” I breathed deeply, feeling the complexity of my thoughts in the rasping of my throat, the unfamiliar weight of the hospital walls, the difficulty of the situation, “you survived a car accident after speaking gibberish to me all night. Now you have—I don't know—a report of some sort that doesn't make any sense. What am I supposed to think? I am worried. Do you think that Brother James can make more sense of this than me?”
Henry's eyes examined me, peered lengthily into or passed me. Eventually, I looked away but felt that he continued to ponder me, like an experiment, like one of George's obsessive queries.
“Could you call the Center and ask for Brother James to come. There is no rush, but I would like to speak with him and they won't let me leave until tomorrow.”
“I will. Can I get anything for you? Do you want me to ask the nurses for anything?”
“No, don't tell them anything. Please, just call Brother James.”
I met his eyes again and noticed the long shadows of his face; I saw lines on his face that I had never considered before. Henry had always felt calm, collected, and somehow youthful, somehow warding off the world through his simplicity and practice. Now, I believe that he had aged or grown, or perhaps transformed somehow; but I did not think that then, only that a long night had worn heavily on my friend and that I had not before seen age work on him. I sighed and found a phone book at the nurses' station and called Brother James, whom I first reassured and then explained Henry's request.
Returning to the room, I felt suddenly and surprisingly intrusive; George and Henry were quietly staring at one another, unmoving and firm, as if planted as statues. I saw between them a balance, an uncanny and weird energy that charged the room. For a moment I cannot measure, I silently and unknowingly observed, caught by the strange spell. A light flickered or I blinked and we were all back in the room together, just two friends visiting another who had suffered an accident. I breathed deeply and thought of Henry's advice to watch my breathing, when I noticed a strange scent, a hue in the light, something that seemed off center, tilted, forced. Then, as if it had never been there, the sensation evaporated
“Brother James is on his way. I spoke with him and he has an open schedule.”
“That is like him, never one to make plans,” Henry replied, smiling sagely.
“Why do you want Brother James to come?” George asked.
“Brother James has guided my meditation in the past. I think he might help me with,” and he inhaled sharply, his ears perked, he glanced out the window, “understanding my thoughts.”
“When was the last time you saw Brother James?” I asked.
“When you visited the Center with me. I called two days ago, but he was out in the gardens at school. Why?”
“You said something about what he told you then.”
“Yes, the droplets on the window pane; I have been meditating on what he told me then. I would have difficulty explaining it. He has also guided me with meditating on the koans, traditional riddles or puzzles that defy reason. This, I consider, to be similar to the koans. It is difficult to explain.”
Questions bubbled up inside of me, then settled again, feeling like a film over my thoughts. I was confused, profoundly so, and felt something mechanical in Henry's words. George made very little noise, even when she had spoken, it had been stealthy and hushed. I wanted to leave quickly, immediately, like the mouse at the imperceptible hint of an owl above. I felt threat then, a threat that has yet to leave me.
“Could I go, Henry? Will you be okay?”
“That is fine, Alexis. Can you come back tomorrow? The doctor informed me that I might have trouble getting around.”
“Of course. I'll come back tomorrow morning. I'll take you home.”
“Thank you.” He turned to George and tensed. “It was nice meeting George. Perhaps I will see you again soon.”
“I would like that.”