THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019 57
the sand. Ciara was fine. She was sleep-
ing. He’d remembered to put her sun
hat on before he left the house; her
neck was properly covered. He’d never
told anyone that he thought she was
dead, that he’d carried her, dead, for
twenty minutes. She was in Vancouver
now. She’d be Skyping him later. He
hadn’t thought of it in years, that day
on the beach. He’d never tell her—he
didn’t know why not.
He was at the front door. But he
stepped off the porch and walked back
across the small garden to the wheelie
bins—brown, green, and black—and
the hedge. He looked again, made sure
they were tucked in under the lip of
the hedge, that they wouldn’t be lifted
by the wind that was coming. He pushed
them in farther. He didn’t know what
else to do with them. He could bring
them into the house. But he wouldn’t.
He didn’t want his wife to find them
lined up in the hall. Maybe he’d look
out the bedroom window and see them
spinning up, like Dorothy’s house in
“The Wizard of Oz.” Something to tell
Ciara when they were talking. The brown
one landed on the old witch across the street.
He let himself in.
The house was still empty. The way
he’d left it. His wife would be home
soon. She’d have to be. She’d have to
get home before the curfew kicked in.
Or else she’d be trapped in a spotlight,
shot on the front step by some kid in
the Army.
He went down, through the house,
to the kitchen.
He took the tablets, the three slim
boxes, out of the chemist’s paper bag.
His new pills. His regimen. He put
them standing in a row. They looked
unfinished like that. He needed more
boxes. Stonehenge. He could make a
joke of it when he was telling her later.
He got his reading glasses from the
table. He’d left them on top of the book
he was reading; he always did that.
“The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Eu-
rope, America.” They could all fuck off
till he’d taken his pills, and found out
what it was that he was taking.
He’d loved carrying the youngest
girl, Cliona. Any excuse, almost liter-
ally any excuse, he’d slide her into the
sling, her face looking out at the world,
and go off—to the shops, town, the sea-
front, nowhere. He’d loved the weight
there against his chest and the fact that
he saw what she was seeing. He could
feel her excitement, her legs hopping,
the approaching faces breaking into
smiles—for her, then for him. She’s gor
geous. She’s a dote. Proud of his daugh-
ter, proud of himself. Cliona in the sling,
Conor in the buggy, Ciara and Maeve
on either side holding the handles.
Down through town, through the
crowds, Henry Street, Grafton Street.
People made way, he never lost a child.
The doctor had sent him leaflets in
the post. “The Fats of Life—The Low-
down on High Cholesterol” was one.
He wasn’t fat. He hadn’t read it yet; he’d
glanced at it. There was an article about
some smiling actor from “Fair City”
who’d taken “control of his cholesterol”
and a page called “Recipe Corner.” There
was another leaflet. “Angioplasty & Cor-
onary Stenting.” There were no pictures
in that one. Definitions, questions an-
swered, a detachable consent form at
the back. He hadn’t read that one, either.
He took his glasses off the book and
went back to Stonehenge. He listened,
for whistling wind, falling branches,
roof slates decapitating pensioners.
He remembered Hurricane Char-
ley—in 1986, he thought it was. He’d
sat on his bed all night and waited for
the windows to fly in on top of him,
shred the curtains, impale him against
the wall. He’d lived alone then. It wasthe last time he’d felt physically fright-
ened; he thought that was true. That
was more than thirty years ago.
He looked at the three boxes.
—The maximum dose, she’d said,
the cardiologist, this morning when
he’d met her. To be on the safe side.
—O.K.
—One piece of advice.
—Yes?
—Don’t Google, she’d said.
—Your colleague said that as well.—Good, she’d said. You know
enough for now. You’ll pick up more
as we go along.
She was looking at him over her
glasses, as if she’d stopped being just a
doctor and had become his new friend.
He wondered later, when he was look-
ing at the scrambled eggs he’d ordered
in the café across from the hospital,
and the little portion of silver-foiled
butter for the toast, if that was him,
seeing her like that, or if it was her, part
of her training or her personality. He’d
taken the advice; he hadn’t Googled
“coronary-artery disease.”
He looked at the boxes. He picked
up the biggest one. Rosuvastatin Teva
Pharma. It sounded like a star or a
planet. Forty milligrams. The maxi-
mum dose, the cardiologist had said.
That fact had impressed him.
—We need to get the cholesterol
right down to where it should be.
—O.K.
May cause dizziness, a label on the
box said. He picked up one of the other
boxes. The same thing—May cause diz
ziness. If affected, do not drive or operate
machinery. Did that include his laptop?
Or the printer. He’d joke about that,
too, when he was telling his wife. I fell
off the laptop—within seconds of taking
the things.
There was a leaflet—another leaflet;
death by fuckin’ leaflet—inside the box.
He unfolded it. It looked a bit like the
instructions that came with a washing
machine or a blender: Read all of this
leaflet carefully before you start taking
this medicine because it contains impor
tant information for you. He’d never read
a leaflet in his life. He thought that
was literally true.
—Decide on a time of day, the car-
diologist had told him. Morning, eve-
ning—whatever suits.
He didn’t want to become the man
who forgot his pills, or the man who
remembered his fuckin’ pills. He could
hear his father. Where are my pills, where
did I leave my pills? The refrain that
had made the grandkids—his kids—
laugh whenever they heard it. They
still said it, ten years after his father’s
funeral, when they were looking for
the salt on the table or a missing sock
under a bed—when they were home.
He had no grandkids to entertain
with his pills. He’d take them—the