A Quiet Snow

by Vincent Lam, The Globe And Mail
December 23, 2006

hat do the mitts look like?" said Maria, elbow-deep in the York Children's Hospital lost-and-found box.

"Bright yellow with red stars on the back," said Quentin. He wore a good suit, which needed to be pressed. "Thanks for looking." Quentin held each item carefully as he fished it out of the box, peered at a single sock, a sweater.

"Favourite ones, huh? I know all about that. World ends if they're lost."

Quentin removed his wire-framed glasses and rubbed them with his shirt. He perched them back on his nose, and explained that his daughter had always been particular about mitts. It was almost impossible to find ones she would wear. Now, she was running around in the snow with red hands, refused to wear any other, and this was why he needed to find them.

It felt good while saying it, but he immediately regretted doing so. Wished he had said nothing. The moment the words were out, he could not have admitted to their brief pleasure.

"Every little girl wants her favourite mitts." Maria turned back into the box, "How long has she had them? What's her name?"

He said, "Josephine." He couldn't think of a false name. "My wife got them, last year's Christmas gift." Quentin stared for a moment at a grey hat, then a purple scarf, as if they might suddenly transform into his daughter's mitts. Each object remained a stranger. As they sifted through the layers of clothing in the box, they piled them on the table -- stacks of items that were not yellow mitts with red stars. Now, he wished that he had claimed to be searching for a niece's mitts, or a son's, which would have been easier.

"When did you say your daughter was here?"

"Couple weeks ago," said Quentin.

It had been between Christmas and New Year. There was fresh snow over black ice, after one of the parties that they didn't have to attend, where they shouldn't have stayed so late, where he should have refused a last glass of punch, should have let Indira drive, and shouldn't have tried to rush the yellow light where the Bloor viaduct came swooping towards Broadview. The "should haves" and "shouldn't haves" were a comforting distraction.

"Were you here?" he said. "You're a nurse, right?"

"Me? Just a porter. We all dress the same, huh?"

"It was a busy day."

"Always busy," said Maria. "I stay out of the way when the action is happening, clean up the mess after. Someone's got to." They plucked a pink toddler snowsuit, a single black ski boot, a hand-knitted scarf, until they reached the bottom of the lost-and-found box without finding any yellow mitts. They began to pile the clothing back into the box, folding each item and then returning it.

Maria said, "There's somewhere else we can look."

"My daughter is just particular." He was now committed to saying this, "But we can get other mitts."

"But there's another place to look."

The truly horrible thing was that he didn't even have a scratch, not the tiniest bruise from the accident itself. In the snow- falling quiet that came after, he experienced a shocking lack of pain. He remembered the yelp of car horns, the stutter of antilock brakes -- useless on ice, the snake sound of the sliding tires, the hollow bangs - one, then another. Nothing but black. Had he been blinded? No, just the airbag in his face, now it deflated to restore his vision.

By the time Quentin undid his seatbelt, opened the door, and stepped into the snowdrift, the whole collision had already become memory. There was a smell of gasoline. Fat, wet flakes drifted as before, and melted in his hair. He couldn't pull Indira's door open, its frame twisted and jammed into the car. Indira was frantic, blood flowed down her face, she asked for Josephine. Quentin said to stay still. He tried to wrestle his way through the metal to the back seat, where his daughter was quiet but moved a little. He had once read that in such situations people can have superhuman strength -- can bend metal and lift trucks. He fought, struck and pried at the car. It did not give, and finally he snaked his hand through to squeeze Josephine's foot; she seemed to stir. That is how he cut his arm. Afterwards, he was glad for the wound -- to lessen the shame of walking away from it. The first ambulance arrived, called for help, the firemen came, another ambulance, a fireman with powered tools pushed him aside, cut into the car, one ambulance for Josephine and one for Indira. It didn't occur to him that they would go to different hospitals until the ambulance in which he was travelling with Josephine blazed into the Children's Hospital.

As they finished piling the laundry neatly into the box, Maria said, "Notice how it all smells so nice?"

It did. The box, piled high with derelict children's clothing, smelled pleasant and fresh. Quentin thought of the lost-and- found box at his daughter's school, which was rank with the odour of kids who had just come in from playing in springtime slush.

"Everything goes through the wash before coming here. We'll go to the laundry."

"I've taken enough of your time."

"Won't take long, it's just downstairs."

"No, I think I'll leave it. Don't want to trouble you."

"I don't mind," said Maria. She smiled and winked, "I know all about favourite mitts."

This morning, Indira, now awake for the third day in a row but only able to speak today, had asked Quentin if he could bring Josephine's mitts -- the yellow ones with red stars. Doing better every day, Indira's doctor said, as they stood outside her ICU room. The monitors and lights resembled the cockpit of an airplane - flashed their coloured graphs on the screens. It was a tangle of numbers and tracings, which all came down to Indira doing better.

He remembered what had happened to the hat. The paramedics rushed the stretcher into the hospital, were met by a snowstorm of people - white coats blown in every direction. The blood- soaked hat was quickly rolled off Josephine's head, tossed on the floor, scissors split her snowpants and sweater so that she lay unwrapped, as naked as birth. Unlike the exultant shock when she had entered the world, Josephine was now pale, still. The mitts, however, he couldn't recall. Was she even wearing them in the car? Could they have been forgotten at the party? He remembered the probes, the intravenous lines being attached to her hands, so by that point the mitts were off.

Later, Dr. Kim said he was very sorry. He suggested that Quentin go to the other hospital, to be with his wife, that they could send someone with him. Quentin went alone.

Maria took him down the service elevator. They navigated a maze of hallways that pulsed with pipes and ductwork. Among the waist-high bags of linens, the folded stacks of surgical greens, was a cotton bag of lost-and-found clothing.

He asked her, "Why do they clean it all? That's very nice, of course, but. . . ."

"When kids are sick, clothes get very dirty." Maria paused. "Of course, the things that are no longer useful, torn or whatever, they just throw away. But if it's stains, they usually get them out."

Item by item, they emptied the bag. Near the bottom, a flash of yellow, and a single mitten appeared. Red star on the back of it. There were only the faintest rusty stains, and Quentin brought the mitt to his face, then lowered it.

"It's all right," said Maria.

Quentin bolted to the door of the laundry room, and then realized he did not know whether to go right or left. He said, "I'm lost."

"I know. It's a maze. I'll take you," said Maria, and led him by the elbow, out of the basement.

Upstairs, she called a taxi, saw him out. Watched the exhaust billow into a cloud in the January dusk. Dr. Kim had seen them come through the waiting area. When the taxi disappeared, he approached Maria, "Wasn't that the father of . . . "

"Yes," said Maria. "It was."

"My friend works in the ICU, is taking care of his wife," said Dr. Kim. "No one's sure if he's told her, yet. No one else wants to bring it up. It's terrible of course."

"Can't hide something like that, even if you try," said Maria. "He was looking for mittens."

"Did you help him?"

"As much as I could."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Vincent Lam electrified the world of Canadian letters last month when his debut book, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, won the $40,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize for excellence in fiction.

Lam, at 32, was the youngest winner ever of the prestigious award, whose previous recipients include veterans such as Alice Munro, Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler. The resulting attention spurred Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures to the very top of the Canadian bestseller lists, where it perches to this day.

A doctor by training and a Toronto emergency-room physician by choice, Lam drew on his medical background for Bloodletting's compelling stories, which intertwine the lives, professional and personal, of four young graduates from the University of Toronto medical school.

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