He looks at me. Not at the ceiling. At me.
"Poutine's going to destroy the couch," I say. "Marc's doing food and litter, but Bagel hasn't been properly spoiled in days. Someone should probably—"
"You don't have to," he says. Fast. Almost before I finish.
There it is. The same sentence from the first night, the same four words, the same delivery aimed at the ceiling instead of me.You don't have to.
But this time I hear what's underneath it. Notgo away. NotI don't need you. Something closer to:I don't know how to need you without it costing you something.
"I know," I say. Same two words. Same as before.
The room is quiet. The machines beep. Somewhere down the hall, a nurse laughs at something.
I don't sayI'm coming home with you.He doesn't sayplease.Neither of us explains anything, because explaining would require naming what we are, and we still haven't done that, and I'm starting to think the not-naming is doing more work than any name ever could.
But when I open my laptop again, I'm not looking at Derek's logo.
I'm googlinghow to make a bathroom accessible for someone with a pelvic fracture.
I don't know what that means yet. I'm not ready to know. But my hands are already typing, and somewhere behind me he's gone still in a way that means he's not really asleep, and neither of us says anything about it.
6
SURGERY DAY
Surgery is on Tuesday.
I know this because Dr. Tremblay told us last Tuesday, and since then I've been counting days the way I used to count hours in that first waiting room — not because counting helps, but because my brain needs something to do with its hands.
Maman arrives at 5:45 AM. I know this because I'm already there — I slept in the recliner again, my spine memorizing its geometry — and I hear her before I see her: the click of her boots in the hallway, the rustle of a bag that I already know contains food.
"T'as déjà mangé?" she whispers, because Ethan is still asleep, or performing sleep, which with him is sometimes the same thing.
"I'm fine."
She gives me the look — the one that meansI heard you and I'm choosing not to believe you— and hands me a Tupperware. Crêpes. Still warm. She made crêpes at 4 AM on her son's surgery day, and she brought them for me, because Ethan can't eat — nothing before anaesthetic, the nurses reminded ustwice yesterday — but she needed to feedsomeone. I take the Tupperware and I don't argue, because I'm learning that the fastest path through Maman's love is compliance.
At 7:10, they come for him — pre-op prep, the nurse explains, first case of the morning. Two orderlies and a nurse I recognize — Jocelyne, the one who always calls himmon grandeven though she's taller than he is. They make him confirm his name, his date of birth, his allergies. He answers everything in the flat, cooperative voice of a person who is being very calm about the fact that strangers are about to open him up and bolt metal to his bones.
Maman holds his face. Kisses both cheeks. Says something in his ear that I can't hear and don't need to.
He nods. His face is set at the angle that saysI'm fineso that no one in the room has to feel responsible for the fact that he isn't.
He looks at me as they wheel him past.
"See you," he says. Like he's clocking in for a regular shift.
"See you," I say. Like I believe him.
The doors close. It's quiet.
Maman sits down in the chair next to me. She folds her hands in her lap, interlacing the fingers how people do when they need their hands to be doing something and there's nothing left to do. She stares at the doors. I stare at the doors.
Then she reaches into her purse and pulls out her knitting. A half-finished scarf in dark green wool — a project that exists not to produce a scarf but to produce a reason for your hands to move while your brain is somewhere you can't follow.
"C'est pour Camille," she says. "Noël prochain."
It's January. Christmas is eleven months away. But I understand. You knit what you can control.
