"Everywhere."
"Be specific."
A morbid rattle escapes me, my current version of a laugh. "Ribs. Stomach. Back. Cheek."
"Your arm. Vi, your arm."
There's a gash along my forearm I didn't even notice getting, the chair edge maybe, or the floor when I went down. The skin opened in a thin clean line that's bleeding more than it has any right to, given its size.
Matt is already tearing a strip off his shirt. He folds it into a narrow band and threads it through a gap in the chain-link, then passes the tail through a lower gap so he can wind it around my forearm, working blind through the fence, his whole hand angled through the links to reach. The chain-link presses diamond indentations into the side of his face as he works.
When he ties it off, he stays crouched there, close, his breaths coming warm through the metal.
"I didn't hear you scream."
"That's because I didn't."
"Good. I'm proud of you."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he shifts his weight and settles in like a man deciding to stay a while.
"You know, I had this kid once," he says. "In tenth grade. He wrote a five-page essay arguing that homework should be declared a violation of international law." He pauses. "Works-cited page and everything."
I breathe carefully around my ribs. "What did he cite?"
"The Geneva Convention."
My mouth pulls at the corner. Pulls against the dried blood on my cheek.
"Under cruel and unusual punishment. I gave him a B-plus. Not because the argument held up, but because anyone who goes to that much effort to avoid doing homework deserves credit for the irony."
He tears another strip. Wets it from his cup and threads it through a lower gap, pressing it against my eyebrow. His arm crooks through the chain-link up to the elbow.
"Then there was this girl who was obsessed with her hamster. Talked about it all the time. Later we found out she brought that hamster to school every day for a month. In her backpack. The hamster just lived in there, eating granola bar crumbs, having the time of its life. Nobody knew."
"How did they find out?"
"It escaped during a quiz. Ran across a kid's desk." A pause. "The hamster's name was Comptroller."
"Comptroller?"
"Her dad worked for the city."
The laugh that comes out of me is small and broken and real and it wrecks my ribs so badly my vision blackens at the edges. Matt's mouth curves through the chain-link as he ducks his head, like he's embarrassed by how pleased he is that he made me laugh in here.
He works in silence after that. When he finally runs out of cuts he leans back against the fence and stays there, his shoulders against it, facing out the way I'm facing in.
I lie on my back and stare at the ceiling and breathe. Short breaths because long ones hurt too much. The amber light flickers somewhere in the middle distance, and I count the flickers without meaning to, the way you count things when your brain needs something to hold on to that isn't the pain or the fear.
Matt's breathing slows, becoming even and steady. I don't know how he does that. Falls asleep in here like it's just a place, like it's just a night, like his body hasn't learned to brace for whatever comes next.
Soon enough, though, sleep takes me too.
One second I'm on the mattress and the next I'm withhim.
We are in his gallery. Except the room is a bit different, with huge windows letting in light through sheer curtains blowing in. He is standing beside a canvas I don't recognize, talking about the brushwork, about the way the painter built up the shadow in layers over weeks, and his hand moves without him noticing, fingertips tracing the air a few inches from the surface the way you would if you were allowed to touch it. I watch his hands and think I understand now why he collected things. Why he needed to get that close.
Then his hand brushes mine on accident. He goes still before he turns and gazes straight into my eyes, his filled with longing and hope.
