The New World

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Jim collapsed and died at the hospital where he and Jane both worked, she as a pediatric surgeon and he as a chaplain — a humanist chaplain, as he liked to remind everyone. Jane was on a flight home from a conference in Paris, fast asleep in transatlantic tranquillity. After the plane landed, her phone stumbled over itself, the notifying chimes and vibrations interrupting each other as soon as she turned it on. There was a message from Jim, sent hours ago. So she was tricked, for half a second, into thinking he was fine. Then she saw all the other texts, and all the voice mails. Jane’s seatmate, a hair-helmeted blond lady, laid a hand on Jane’s arm and said, “Oh, something terrible has happened, hasn’t it?”

“My husband is sick,” Jane said, though she already believed, from the volume and tone of the messages, that he must be dead. While Jane tried to return every call, her seatmate pushed with her through the cab line at JFK, yelling, “Out of the way! Can’t you people see this is an emergency?”

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