“Let’s review the facts.”
Will sighed and stared down at the pavement of the hospital parking lot, avoiding eye contact with Gerald Abraham, who loomed above him in his white coat and projected a profound energy of disapproval at the state of Will’s clothing and also possibly his emotions.
“Sure,” said Will, because if he’d been desperate enough to contact Gerald forty-five minutes ago when Nora had basically kicked him out of Jonah’s room, he was also desperate enough to do this Gerald’s way.
“You spent the night at the hospital with your girlfriend—”
“We ought to get the terminology right,” Will said, because there was somethingwrongwith him, clearly. His Abraham mimicry was off the charts, though he had not used any emojis in his text message requesting a meeting. “I don’t know if she’s technically my girlfriend.”
“Fine.”
Will wondered if the man would take out his notebook and start recording this humiliation in shorthand.
“You spent the night at the hospital with the woman you’re involved with.”
Also doesn’t sound right, thought Will,but whatever. He nodded.
“She was there for her neighbor, who is also something like a . . . what would you say? Uncle?”
“Not uncle,” said Will, knee-jerk. “More like grandfather, maybe.”
“Fine,” Gerald repeated. “And the news is not positive for his return to his current home?”
Will swallowed, shifting on the bench that usually served as a pickup spot for a parking shuttle service. “Hard to say,” he lied.
“A metal rod in his femur and delicate hand surgery still to come? Eighty years old? Three flights of stairs?”
Jeez, all right. Gerald really went in for the facts. Pretty good thinghehadn’t been in the room for Dr. Terano’s visit.
“Correct. But I didn’t say that. I only—”
“You brought up the third floor.”
Gerald was a pretty good listener; that was the thing, even if Will had spent the first ten minutes of this conversation telling a very disorganized version of the events of the last two days. Jonah’s fall. Nora’s rushed return from San Diego and their seeming reconciliation. This morning’s meeting, and Nora’s insistence afterward that she would “take it from here.” He’d tried to stick to the plan he made: suggested that they call Benny, or Mr. and Mrs. Salas, offered to drive Nora back to her place. But she’d wanted none of it. Wanted none ofhim.
“I’ll call you,” she’d said, cool and remote, and it’d sounded like San Diego all over again.
“Yes, but only because—”
“The problem is obvious. She’s very protective of her neighbors, whom you’ve said are basically her family. There’s been a lot of change in her building, and most of it has been your doing.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Gerald,” he said. “But also, that’s a little unfair. Her grandmother died, and so did my uncle. Now this, with Jonah. None of that’s my doing.”
“Hmm.” This was the noise Gerald made whenever Will introduced a new complexity to a case. Possible undiagnosed diabetes. A secondary infection that complicated the pharmaceutical plan.
Will felt liked he’d scored the most worthless point.
“I admit, I shouldn’t have mentioned the third-floor thing. At that moment.”
He’d figured that out even before he’d gotten on the elevator to leave, realizing what that tug of memory had been when he’d seen Nora turn pale and sick-looking at the mention of the building’s accessibility. That’s whathe’dprobably looked like, that day in the backyard when Mrs. Salas had found his parents’ photograph.
I’m rattled, he remembered telling her.
“But things had been going well before that. I was taking care of her. I took care of things for her neighbors, before she got there. I was only trying to—”
“You’re making her sound like a patient,” Gerald said, and Will straightened, defensive.
“You’re one to talk. You got Sally back—with my help, by the way—by planning nonroutine dates and not telling her anything about her table manners.”
