A Darker Light. Heidi Priesnitz

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A Darker Light - Heidi Priesnitz

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and arrived with a warm muffin and a cup of tea. He guided Sara into his car and opened his arms for her as if expecting a watery torrent, but her eyes were strangely dry.

      They were silent as they waited in the cold, bright corridor of the old hospital. They sat next to each other in a long row of plastic chairs that were fastened to the wall.

      "Kyle?" she asked. "Why did you come for me?"

      He used his hand to smooth her soft brown hair. "I could-n't very well have said no."

      "I suppose."

      Sinking into the ease of his care, Sara scorned herself for ignoring his phone calls, for never leaving a forwarding address, for not sending greeting cards. Even though she knew it was a trap, she sank comfortably back into the mould he had designed for her. She wondered if one day she would have the courage to finally break it.

      "Sara?" he said, gently rubbing her back. "I think the nurse is looking for you."

      "What?" For a moment she'd been dreaming.

      "It's your turn." He stood to help her up. "I'll wait here for you."

      She nodded and followed the nurse.

      It was the same small-nosed nurse who had, half an hour earlier, dug around in her arm, trying to find a vein big enough for the large injection of dye. In times of distress, Sara's veins hid below the surface. Now, as she walked, yellow liquid seeped into the puff of cotton taped to her arm.

      As she entered the dark lab room, she was greeted by a technician who wore jeans beneath her hospital whites. Seeing the camera that was mounted on a stand and affixed to a long table, Sara took one calm breath.

      "Alright. I need you to hold still. This might be a little bright." The woman pointed a beam of light at Sara's eyes. "I'm going to take a series of photographs over the next five minutes to chart the progress of the dye. It's important that you try not to move."

      Sara's mouth watered at the first shutter click. She hadn't taken a photo in days.

      Against the drone of the stopwatch, the nurse chatted idly. "Is it still windy out there? There was quite a chill this morning. My sister says it's colder than seasonal, but isn't April always like this? I try to not get my hopes up until May. Even then, we've had snow, although not for a few years now. It's the way the wind comes off the water. I keep telling my husband, we need to get away from the dreaded ocean. Of course, I love this city. But you know the feeling—months and months of the same cold weather. Makes you want to go south, doesn't it? Maybe even Florida?"

      No one answered her. Sara was on a boat taking photos of the approaching shore. The technician was counting seconds.

      "Are you alright there?" The nurse took Sara's limp hand. "We had quite a time with the needle earlier, didn't we? I'm still sorry about that. Her veins," she said to her co-worker, "are buried so deep."

      The feel of the nurse's hospital-clean hands made Sara shiver. She was tired of the sterile world of doctors and medicine. She wanted the dirt of villages, or the blowing sand of the desert. She blinked as if to clear something out of her eyes just as the photographer closed the shutter.

      "I know it's hard, but try not to blink."

      When the photos were done, Sara let the nurse shuttle her into the hallway where Kyle was waiting to take her home.

      It took twenty-four hours for the yellow dye to work through Sara's system. In the meantime, she sat alone in the dark of her apartment, waiting. When the phone finally rang, the receptionist at Dr. Porter's office said, "I've scheduled you for surgery a week from Friday."

      "Already?" Sara asked. "Does this mean the test results were negative?"

      "Listen, dear, it's not negotiable. It's the only time I can fit you in. Be early and don't come alone. Understand?"

      "Yes," Sara stammered, "but what about the test results? I had injections at the hospital... a big camera... yellow dye... Dr. Porter said—"

      "He'll need you here by three o'clock. For goodness sake, don't be late."

      "Fine. Three o'clock." Sara hung up the phone. She was so stunned she didn't ask what type of surgery the doctor had in mind.

      chapter 6

      Walking back from a lunch-hour trip to the grocery store, Sitara was swinging her bags—not a fast, happy swinging, but rather a slow, solemn swinging brought on by deep thought.

       "Bapa, why are you here?"

       "To see you, Sitara... in case it is the last time."

      The words kept swimming through her head. And each time she replayed them, they sounded more alarmingly final.

      For many years, she had intended to repair relations with her parents—eventually. She thought the six thousand kilometres separating the two coasts would make picking up the phone easier, since she was safe from the obligation of dropping by. But the distance only made it easier to forget.

      On her walk back to the clinic, she passed a used bookstore. There was a paperback in the window that caught her eye: Misplaced Indians, it was called. Only after reading the subtitle did she realize that it was written about Native Americans and not her parents.

       "Are your parents still in India?" a classmate asks.

       "No, they live in Canada."

       "Are you going home for the break?"

       "Probably not. I'd like to catch up on my reading—I feel a little out of breath."

       "Won't you be lonely, since everyone else goes away?"

       "Not everyone," I say. "Hannah and Devora are staying, and Paul can't afford to fly home this year. I'll manage."

       I don't want to go home, but I no longer bother to say it. For others, I've discovered, Christmas is a week out of time, affected by neither the past nor the present. It's an island of forgiveness and pretending in the name of religion and tradition and gift-giving. Although smiles and feasting seem to come easily to my classmates, I don't have the heart or the stomach for either.

      Walking up the stairs to her clinic, Sitara wondered what had happened to Hannah and Devora. In the six years since they'd graduated from college she'd lost track of them.

      Leaving her groceries in a pile beside the desk, she checked her phone messages and then prepared her office for an afternoon of patients.

      Slowly, her father's words were subsiding, but not without leaving a sticky trace.

      After her last patient left the clinic, Sitara met her father again in the park near his hotel. He was sitting on a bench with an open magazine, watching some kids as they performed tricks on their scooters.

      "Wow, this bench is cold," Sitara said, sitting down next to him.

      "That is why I wear a kurta." He smiled.

      "Well, perhaps I should

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