Page 95 of Katabasis
Alice Law. How many nights during that first year did he bike home long after midnight, giddy with the memory of her laughter? Peter had never known anyone like her—prickly, stubborn, ridiculous Alice. She had an underdog’s persistence, an artist’s creativity, and best of all she thought sodifferentlyfrom everyone he’d trained with at Oxford. Perhaps it was the American influence (Peter had never been to America but his father had led him to believe it was a land of iconoclasts), or perhaps it was Alice’s off-kilter sensibilities, but something about her mind was—well, rhizomatic was the best way he could describe it. She didn’t think in straight lines; she was always zigzagging outward. She was always wondering how unrelated disciplines might speak to one another, or dredging up random shit from archives no one had ever heard of. Can you imagine a world without memory? she would ask. Can we form meaningful relationships if we have the memories of goldfish? Does your pet know that they will one day die? Does teleportation equal death? Now suppose you do think teleportation is death—if you woke up, and your spouse professed they had been teleported from one side of the bed to another, would you mourn them? Never before had he met a thinker whose thoughts spiraled out into places he could not easily follow. He so loved watching her think out loud, hearing her fragmented thoughts spin into complete arguments, seeing her eyes dart around a point in space he could not see.
It wasn’t just that she was brilliant. Everyone around him was brilliant; brilliance here was boring. Alice was achallenge. Alice kept him on his toes. Watch out for that one, Professor Grimes told him over tea at the faculty club. She’ll either flame out early, or she’ll win a Nobel.
Yes, Peter did a lot of watching Alice. At night he dreamed of a birdlike silhouette stretching on tiptoes before a chalkboard. Head tilted, considering.
It was all so romantic. For a short while Peter Murdoch had everything he had ever hoped for: an advisor who inspired him, a best friend who challenged and excited him, and a body that was stunningly cooperative. Every few weeks he biked down to the hospital for a checkup with his gastroenterologist, though deep down he’d started to suspect this was unnecessary. He was now on the longest stretch he’d ever been without a flare. Sometimes, unbelievably, it took active effort to remember the Beast at all.
They said you could go into remission for decades. The Crohn’s information pamphlets were crammed with testimonials by people who one day woke up without pain, without cramps, and never felt it again for years and years. No one knows what induces remission, they said; remission is a miracle; sometimes your body just decides to stop attacking itself. Throughout his childhood Peter had never let himself dare. But as more time passed, the more it felt reasonable to hope that this was it—that he’d left the Beast behind him forever, and now he could run free.
The switch flipped midway through hisfirst year.
Crohn’s could do that to you. He ought to have remembered. The Beast was never vanquished, only banished into hiding. One night he was eating spicy curries and drinking rose cardamom lassi at the Indian place across the bridge. The next morning his stomach was tight with telltale cramps; only mild just yet, but a harbinger of things to come.
It escalated so quickly. This was the worst bout Peter had experienced since he was twelve. Things had gone well for so long that he had forgotten how horrific it could be—the double anvils of constant diarrhea and dehydration, the cramps and hemorrhoids, the revulsion toward putting anything in his mouth for fear it would only come back up again. In a single month he went four times to the hospital; twice first for IV drips, the third and fourth for intravenous steroid courses. He seemed to have developed a resistance to mercaptopurine, and this meant his treatment plan now consisted of hurling various things at a wall and seeing what stuck. His weight plummeted. His skin turned a translucent pale; when he looked in the mirror, he could see his veins, blue and spindly, floating underneath.
He told no one. When you’d earned the reputation he had, the world afforded you a certain privacy. Everyone already had their theories about Peter Murdoch and so, when he started skipping lab days to curl up in bed, when he simply failed to turn in his grading assignments, they simply amplified those theories.Murdoch can’t be bothered. Murdoch doesn’t care.
His goodwill was running out. Erratic was one thing; irresponsible was another.Jesus, Peter, Belinda snapped once, when he leaned on her one too many times to cover his sections,it’s not like the whole world revolves around you.
But anything was better than being vulnerable. In Peter’s imagination, the moment anyone found out would be the moment Peter the Great’s reputation vanished, replaced by Peter the Sick’s. Peter theInvalid’s. And so even by the time he could no longer cycle home for fear of collapsing in the road, he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing. Least of all Alice.
He knew he’d hurt her. He saw her wounded passing looks. He felt terrible about the way he’d left things off. Never before had he felt he owed anyone an explanation, because never before had he become so close to someone that his sudden disappearance could impact their life. Before, Peter had simply slid into the background, out of orbit. He passed in and out of friendships, always a prized acquaintance, never a constant. Here Alice had become a constant. He could not give her up.
Still, the memory of little Jemma Davies was stamped in his mind, and so too the terrifying moment when he could no longer tell friendship from charity. He figured he could always apologize later, make excuses, win her back over. But if they were ever to be friends again, then Alice could never know.
The one person he could not lie to was Professor Grimes. Things had come to their breaking point—he was behind on too many assignments, he’d missed too many meetings. It was impossible now to skate by on reputation alone. At this point he risked losing his funding.
So Peter went to his advisor’s office, medical records in hand, to beg for mercy.
“But you look just fine,” said Professor Grimes, who must not have been looking very hard, for Peter by this point had lost twenty pounds and could count all his ribs in the mirror.
“It’s, ah, not the kind of thing that’s so visibly apparent.”
“And you’ve had it all your life.”
“Diagnosed when I was six.”
“But it’s only just now gotten worse.”
“Seems like it,” said Peter. “I’m obviously very disappointed.”
Professor Grimes frowned. “Well, how long will this last?”
“Nobody knows. It comes and goes, there’s never a set pattern.”
“So you could be incapacitated for over a year.”
Peter winced. “I hope not, sir.”
“Isn’t there something you can take for it?”
“There was,” said Peter. “It’s stopped working. There are newer medications that might work better, but they’ll take some time, and before we try that we need to control the symptoms first. And that’ll take weeks. Meanwhile, I’m not sure how much I can do.”
Professor Grimes seemed thoroughly unconvinced. “I see.”
Peter was not sure he would have believed himself. This seemed precisely the lie a shifty, unreliable doctoral student who had reached his limit would concoct. Perhaps it would have been better if he were missing a limb, or if a jagged scar cut across his body. Then at least the contours of his loss, and incapacity, would have been clear. As it was, Crohn’s was coming off as something completely, conveniently, made-up.A beast gnaws at me at all hours of the day, but you can’t see it. I feel so weak and scattered my mind won’t work—but here I am, speaking to you, clearly alert. My tummy hurts—what a joke.
“Well.” Professor Grimes seemed unsure about what to say. Watching him try to give comfort was like watching a duck put on a suit. Aristotle said it best; certain beings were just not meant for certain functions. “Well... just try to get through it as best you can, won’t you?”
