23. A Disappointed Human Noise - Lords of Serendipity

Jack was asleep in Iceland when Katrina texted him that she was going to the hospital. He didn’t see the message until he woke up and saw the notifications, three hours later.

Jack tried calling her back. She didn’t pick up. Had he let her down so completely, while enjoying his little Iceland fantasy these last few months?

After Katrina had left for Rome, and not wanting to be anywhere near Arcadia, he’d looked up last-minute flights.

He chose Iceland over the Caribbean and immediately liked the place. It looked like a Scandinavian Maine. Its summer was like New England’s fall: cool and damp, with water in the wind. It was also right around the solstice. Days and nights of near-total light.

He rented a small apartment in the center of Reykjavik, applied for a six-month visitor’s visa, bought more than a weekend’s worth of clothing with his topped-up salary and money saved from fewer Katrina bills, asked a neighbor to look in on his house now and then, and changed his return flight to late December.

A few days into his Icelandic sabbatical, knowing he had to do more than walk and swim in thermal pools and eat smoked fish on rye bread while watching happy, gentle drunks dancing and kicking soccer balls with small children in the all-day all-night sunlit city, Jack decided to resume his research. The latest publications he had found were largely about applying artificial intelligence to the Monte Carlo method—new algorithms making it faster and easier to carry out calculations and produce predictions independent of human researchers. The way things were going, there would soon be no need for anyone in his field.

But now, in late November, his daughter suddenly needed him, and he’d been sleeping.

Why hadn’t she texted him repeatedly, or just called him when he didn’t reply? Was it because she couldn’t? Was it because she was too sick, too hurt, too injured, or too upset that, motherless and far from home, alone in a foreign country, just wanting to hear from her father while there was still time, she didn’t, and despaired?

All of this was defibrillating his heart as he called, repeatedly, without getting through. Jack did not believe in God; Elizabeth did. But if he had to believe in God, the God he could believe in was a God who punished you when things were finally going okay in your life, as they had been for him these last few months. A God who let your daughter be in trouble, trying to reach you and when you try to reach her, unreachable.

But then, finally, Katrina texted him back.

She was in the hospital, in Rome, with a bacterial infection. Jack asked her what she’d done to get a bacterial infection, to no response. Instead, she asked for his medical and travel insurance information. He could have pressed the matter, but he didn’t because he was just so very relieved and nearly roulette-grateful to a maybe-God that she seemed to be okay. Later that same morning Katrina texted again to say that she wanted him to come and be with her. He told her he was already searching flights. She texted back that she wanted someone she could actually trust to be with her. He repeated: he was already looking into flights.

An hour later, Katrina called him.

Jack held his breath. A tiny, ineradicable part of him expected to hear an Italian doctor’s regret . . . but no, no, no, it was Katrina.

Are you okay? Did something go wrong? asked Jack.

Silence.

Katrina, are you there? What’s wrong? What’s going on?

I’m here. Just hang on. This isn’t easy with one hand.

The call ended.

She called back.

See what I mean? Let me try again.

Okay. Try what? The infection’s in your hand?

Dad, just wait!

Dad? She had phoned him, by choice, and she had just called him Dad. What had suddenly gone so terribly wrong to make her act like this?

The sound on the other end changed.

Can you hear me? she said, from a greater distance. You’re on speaker.

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. So what’s wrong? What’s happened to your hand?

So, the reason I called was to see if you could come to Italy.

Katrina, tell me what happened to your hand.

I got a tattoo last night. I did it alone. Alone.

There was a disappointed human noise in the background.

That’s right, alone, said Katrina. Jack? Are you listening?

Yes. And if it’s infected so badly you’re in the hospital, this must be serious.

I know, Jack. That’s why I’m already in the hospital. And I called to see if you could come to Italy.

Didn’t we just text about this? I’ve already booked my—

Because, you know, I want you to come to Italy.

Yes. Yes, I know, Katrina. Did they give you some medicine for the pain?

I just want you to be with me in the hospital.

That’s why I’ve already booked my—

Because I want someone to be here with me. Someone that I can actually trust.

There was an audible male sigh.

Katrina?

Yes?

Who else is with you right now? Where’s Cham?

I don’t know.

Does she know you’re in the hospital?

I haven’t had a chance to text her yet.

What? Then who’s with you right now? Is it your other roommate? What’s his name again? Matthew?

Nobody. Nobody is with me right now.

Another audible male sigh.

Okay. My flight’s tomorrow. I’ll send you the information. I’ll try to be in Rome by early afternoon. Will you still be in the hospital?

I don’t know. It depends on what the doctors say. Probably.

Hello, Mr. Bayern. Sorry, I mean Dr. Bayern. Sir, this is Mather. I’m Katrina’s—

The call ended.

This time, Katrina didn’t call back.

Even though he was on a cell phone, Jack waited in place, just in case she did. He was in the living room of his rental, sitting on a hard wooden chair at a desk in front of a window. Beside his desk were all the plastic chairs from the kitchen table save one. These were piled with printouts and paper calculations, his efforts to resume his research. His travel plans were set; Katrina was okay, at least medically. There were only a few hours of daylight remaining. He could do a little more work, but it would only confirm, now that he had looked into resuming his research, that the field was going in a very different direction.

Through his window, he saw a young couple in metallic hiking vests and primary-color winter hats walk up the gray stone and yellow-green grass hill toward the massive Lutheran church that sat at the center of the city. They were taking pictures of its soaring modernist Gothic arches—concrete done in infinite-looking ribbing, measured out and cut in precise steppes. The church made Jack think of science fiction paperbacks.

Katrina never called him back.

He went out.

On the clean and empty bus to the thermal city pool a few blocks away from his apartment, Jack had to text her, several times, before she told him the name and location of the hospital. She also confirmed she would still be there when he arrived in Rome the next day. Texting only in response to repeated requests was more typical of Katrina, whether she was at Haven or in Italy, which made him feel much better about whatever her current situation was. Swimming slow laps in warm water under a darkening sky, flanked by older men and women moving in patient, decorous, orderly Icelandic order, Jack made two assumptions about his exceptionally rare phone call with Katrina. First, that its purpose had nothing to do with him. Second, that its purpose had everything to do with the male roommate. Was this Katrina’s boyfriend? Did they even have boyfriends and girlfriends anymore? Whatever they were, something had clearly gone wrong between them.

All of which was still, of course, secondary to his daughter being in the hospital, even if she was being kept overnight merely as a precaution, or, he suspected, as a placation. Regardless of the reasons involved, Katrina needed something from him that wasn’t money or help plotting out the data she was gathering for her independent study.

After his daily swim, Jack didn’t return to his apartment. Instead, he walked up to the grand church, which was open. Inside, a children’s choir was rehearsing for a Christmas concert. Jack sat in a back pew. He took out his phone to see if Katrina had texted him again. She hadn’t. He ignored the sweet, high-pitched singing and the gray bare beauty of the stark sacred space. After a while, he got up and left. All these spontaneous months in Iceland, all this pretending to resume his research. But he wasn’t really a researcher anymore, and he wasn’t a whistleblower, either. Because if he were, he’d tell the world why that student had committed suicide. He’d tell about suicide grades, Allard’s scheme, the professors and lawyers hiding it, the total story of it, the corruption upon corruption upon corruption of the university and how it was dealing with its students and faculty, the living and the dead. It was, he predicted, not just a problem at Arcadia.

But he wasn’t going to test this prediction. He was a single parent who had to pay for his daughter’s university education. He had signed agreements that he would never discuss anything pertaining to the case, in exchange for the money paying for his pretend life in Iceland and Katrina’s genuine life in Rome.

What if he broke the agreement? Would the university fire him, or just give him more money, more time off?

Jack walked down the church hill and back to his apartment. Before going to sleep, he canceled the remainder of his Reykjavik rental, packed his things, and found an apartment in Rome that slept two.