She picked up her fork with her left hand and hesitated. She'd eaten with her left hand before, so she wasn't completely hopeless, but fine motor control with her non-dominant hand was apparently a skill that required more practice than she'd put in.
She aimed for a piece of scrambled egg. The fork skated across the plate and caught nothing. She tried again with more forceand succeeded in launching a chunk of egg off the plate. It landed on the dresser between them.
Dimitri looked at it.
Mattie looked at it.
"That was deliberate," she said. "I was testing the aerodynamics of scrambled eggs."
"And what were your findings?"
"Insufficient lift. Poor trajectory." She speared another piece, this time managing to get it onto the fork, but when she raised it to her mouth, her hand wobbled, and the egg fell into her lap. "Oh, come on."
She tried the toast next. Toast should have been easier. It was a solid surface, a larger target, and no loose pieces. She picked up a slice, brought it toward her mouth, and somehow managed to smear butter across her chin.
Dimitri watched this performance with an expression of heroic restraint and waited.
She set the toast down and let out a breath of surrender. "I cannot even feed myself."
It was so ridiculous that he probably thought she was faking it because she wanted him to offer to feed her or some nonsense like that.
Well, not nonsense since she really couldn't manage. It was the trauma. There was no other explanation for her loss of dexterity.
Maybe the pain meds were making her loopy?
Without a word, Dimitri moved his chair around to her side of the dresser. He picked up her fork, cut her toast into manageable pieces, and speared a bite of egg.
"Open," he said.
The third "open" of the morning. At this rate, it was going to become their word.
"How do you have the patience for all this?"
"I have infinite patience, and you have finite tolerance for wearing your breakfast." He held up the fork. "The egg is slippery."
She opened her mouth.
He fed her with the same calm and patience he'd shown while brushing her teeth and washing her hair. There was no fuss, no performance, and no pitying looks. He alternated bites of egg with pieces of buttered toast, pausing to bring her cup of tea to her lips when she needed to wash things down. Between her bites, he ate his own breakfast, somehow managing the logistics of two meals without rushing either.
"You're disturbingly good at this," she said.
"I'm a scientist. I optimize processes."
"You're going to be a good father."
He grimaced. "I'm too young to think about fatherhood."
For some reason, she had a feeling that he'd wanted to say something else, but she didn't push. He was young, and thinking about parenting on this island was absurd.
When the food was gone and the tea was finished, Mattie leaned back in her chair and let the warmth settle into her bones. Her hand was still throbbing, a constant note of pain beneath everything else, but she was clean, and her stomach was full.
Dimitri gathered the plates and cups and stacked them neatly on the two trays. When he sat back down beside her, his expression shifted from lightness into something heavier.
"We need to talk about what happened with Dave," he said.
The warmth in her chest cooled. "I know."
"Yesterday, I managed to avoid him by staying up here, but that's not going to work twice. He's going to come for his shots today, and he'll have questions about how I fought off those warriors, and I need to prepare answers."
