My Oxford Year: A Novel

Think of me as withdrawn into the dimness,

Yours still, you mine; remember all the best

Of our past moments, and forget the rest;

And so, to where I wait, come gently on.

William Allingham, “Untitled,” 1890

Eventually, I clean myself up. I go back out to the waiting room. Cecelia is curled up in a chair like a cat tipped vertically. Antonia sleeps on William’s shoulder as he stares at the floor.

Before I can go to them, Dr. Corrigan appears around the corner. William rouses Antonia, and Cecelia wakes up, senses the stirring. We all go to the doctor. She looks grim, causing my heart to beat erratically, a child on the kitchen floor banging pots and pans.

“No sign of improvement as of yet,” she states, and my heart stops beating. “We’re still keeping him under and intubated. He’s not responding to the antibiotics yet. But . . .” She looks confused. “I received his blood work. And while his white-blood-cell count is still quite low, it seems that the trial may have had an effect.”

“What do you mean?” I ask.

“Compared to the files that were sent to me, I’m seeing relatively little incidence of the myeloma. He’s remarkably clean.”

A small gasp comes from the back of Antonia’s throat. I can’t move. “He’s in remission,” William utters.

The doctor shakes her head. “I’m not his oncologist. I have the barest of tests in front of me. But I can say that I see a definite shift. The next twelve hours are critical. If he pulls through the pneumonia—”

“I want to see him.” My voice is calm but edgy, as if I could tip over into hysteria at the slightest provocation.

“He’s in isolation—”

That does it. “Now! I’ll see him now!”

“He’s deeply sedated, he won’t know you’re—”

“I don’t care!” I shout.

Antonia tries to grab my shoulder, but I shake her off. Cecelia’s hand slips into mine, offering strength, support. I hear her voice, low and calm. Capable. “Give her a mask, Doctor. Whatever you need to do. Surely, she can be let in.”

Dr. Corrigan considers us. She nods, once. She purses her lips, but says, “Follow me.”

AFTER DONNING A pair of scrubs, having a nurse help me wash and dry my hands, and being given a surgical mask, I’m taken to Jamie’s room. Dr. Corrigan points at the window in the door. “Just prepare yourself.” I peek into the room.

Jamie looks like death. Plain and simple. He’s as pale as the bedsheet, his face covered by a ventilator, an IV in his hand. He’s surrounded by machines. Dr. Corrigan moves to the door and opens it softly. “I’ll be back in ten minutes to fetch you out again. You mustn’t touch him. The risk of further infection is too great.”

I hover at the threshold. “Can I ask you . . . how long he has?”

She’s taken aback. “What do you—”

“I mean . . .” I pause, glancing at Jamie. “Let’s say he comes through the pneumonia and we’re just dealing with the amount of cancer that you saw. How long?”

The doctor shakes her head. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“Please. How long?”

“I don’t know.”

“Approximately.”

The doctor snorts, as if I’m amusing her. “Eleanor.” Her voice takes on a more real tenor, dropping the doctor filter. “What you’re asking is unknowable. His oncologist probably gave him timetables, ay? He has this long if he gets treatment, this long if he doesn’t? Well, the oncologist wasn’t expecting pneumonia, now, was he? Asking me how long Jamie has to live is like asking me how long you have. Do you know how long you have?”

All I can do is shake my head.

“Exactly. Neither do I. What I can tell you is that, now, you have ten minutes.” She turns and disappears down the hallway.

Reeling, I enter the room.

There’s not even a chair in here. I look down at him and edge closer to the bed. My hand snakes out before I remember that I can’t touch him. I grab it with my other hand, clasping it in front of me.

Everything I wanted to say to him evaporates. What am I doing here? What’s the plan? Bludgeon him into recovery with invectives and recriminations? Cry and plead until he wakes up just to shut me up? Beat my chest? Tear out my hair?

Looking at him, eyes closed, head tipped back, tube down his throat, breathing artificially, I can’t believe it’s only been six months since I first met him. Since he doused me with condiments in a chip shop. Since I hated him at first sight. Since that first class, our tutorial, whiskey and ale, drunken first fumblings, Buttery kisses and chapel trysts. Dry English wit one minute, gallows humor the next. His eyes. Those pools of every shade and depth.

Eyes, it suddenly occurs to me, I might never see again.

Carefully, I perch at the foot of his bed. I look at him for a moment.

“Jamie?” Just saying his name brings a flood of tears. “Jamie, I hope you can hear me. Please. This isn’t your Oxenford. Okay? This isn’t where you cross.”

I don’t know when it is, or where it is, but it’s not here. It can’t be here.

Please don’t let it be here.

Stay, Jamie. If you can, if you want to, please choose another time. Choose to stay. Choose to stay with me.

Stay with me and I’ll stay with you.

This catches me up short.

It came so effortlessly, but is it true? Because I can’t say that—I can’t even think that—if it’s not true. It’s not fair, to either of us.

After all, that was our one rule: be honest.

Maybe that means, first and foremost, being honest with myself.

And honestly? When I think of leaving on June 11, it feels as if I’m preparing to amputate an essential part of me. It feels sacrificial. Like death. Sudden death. The car-accident kind. The twig snap that drives so quick and true into your heart you don’t dare remove it for fear of how much it will hurt. You just leave it there. You walk around with it. And when people stare at it in pity, you look down at your chest and you shrug. No, really, it’s better this way.

This is what Antonia was saying.

Losing someone is hard enough. But death without the process of dying is an abomination. It takes nine months to create life; it feels unnatural, a sin against nature, that the reverse shouldn’t also have its time. Time to let go of the known as we take hold of the unknown.

Maybe in this, an Oxenford can be shared. Maybe it’s not just for the person crossing the river, but also for those left on the bank. Looking into a loved one’s eyes, seeing the knowing there, the inevitability, and telling them, I love you. My love is with you to your end; yours will be with me until mine.

Because the love doesn’t die, does it?

What Cecelia said at Oliver’s funeral: Love well those who are dying, so that they may die in love.

In love.

God, Jamie, please wake up.

I look down at him, his bony shoulders, his ravaged face, his chest rising and falling artificially, and I realize that there are two possible narratives: he can be a boy I knew during my Oxford year, the first boy I ever loved, who I heard went on to die sometime later.

Or he can be the boy I journeyed to the end with.

When I first found out Jamie was sick, I believed that his disease mirrored my obligations back in America. We were both otherwise engaged. We both had commitments we couldn’t get out of.

The difference is Jamie doesn’t have a choice. My father didn’t have a choice.

I do.

And when you get a choice, you’re a fool not to take it.

But, I’m going home. Come June, I hug Antonia, hug William (now that I can), kiss Cecelia, say farewell to my three companions, and leave. Click my heels three times and go home.

But what if I want to stay in Oz?

What if Oz is home now?

Here with this man before me, and everything that comes with him. Parents. A sister. Friends. Oxford.

It’s just not the plan.

My father taught me how to care passionately about things, how to fight for them. I love believing in something and fighting for it. That’s what I told Antonia and that’s true. It’s what I counseled Janet to do, on a national stage, no less. Believe in something and fight for it.

Well. I found my next fight.

Love.

That’s my choice.

“Eleanor?” The doctor’s soft, imploring voice cuts through my thoughts.

“Be right there,” I say. I swallow. I whisper, “Jamie. Please hear me. This isn’t your Oxenford, our Oxenford. But I promise, we’ll find it. Together. Because I love you and I’m not leaving you. You’re going to have to leave me first. Choose to stay with me, and I’ll choose to stay with you.”

I’m surprised how sacred these words are to me, like wedding vows.

And if you’re not surprised by life, then what’s the bloody point?

I look down at his hand lying beside him on the sheet. The same hand splayed across a book in the Bodleian, that offered me “Dover Beach” to read aloud, that helped me into a punt, that lay on my stomach last night when he told me he loved me for the first time.

I reach out, but stop just short of touching it.

I glance back up at his face. Sunken cheeks, shadowed eyes, a day’s worth of stubble.

Still alive.

I lean down, inches from his ear. “I will learn what everything costs.”