The gap between our hands is small. Smaller than any distance I've calculated in this room, in this hospital, in any of the spaces where I've been measuring how close is safe. And my hand is already there — already a little too far forward, already past the line I'd set for myself — because I moved first. I moved before I could perform the decision not to.
I don't close the gap. Neither does he.
His fingers twitch. Once. Like a reflex reaching for something the conscious mind hasn't authorized.
Then he's asleep. Real sleep this time — the kind where the face goes slack and the rhythm deepens and the person isn't performing unconsciousness but actually living in it.
I sit there. The machines beep. The recovery room hums its quiet, institutional hum.
My hand stays where it is. His hand stays where it is. The gap between them is the width of a breath — too small to mean nothing, too wide to mean everything. But I can feel the warmth crossing it, the way it does in all the spaces we haven't closed yet.
And I don't pull back. That's the part I'll think about later. Not that I moved — but that I didn't retreat.
7
COMING HOME
The stairs are the first problem.
Fourteen of them. More than two weeks in a hospital bed and I've forgotten what stairs feel like. I've climbed these stairs ten thousand times — with groceries, with laundry, with Poutine tucked under one arm and Bagel draped over my shoulder like a very fat, very orange scarf. Fourteen stairs have never been a problem. Fourteen stairs are just what happens between the front door and the apartment.
But fourteen stairs with crutches and a pelvis that catches every time I shift my weight — a deep stiffness where the hardware is, not sharp anymore but heavy, like something bolted together that hasn't learned to move yet. That's a different equation. The physiotherapist gave me a protocol. Lead with the right leg going up — the side that still works. Lead with the crutches going down. Don't twist. Don't lean. Don't do anything fast.
Nora is behind me. I know this because I can hear her — not anxious exactly, but alert, ready to catch me if I slip. One of her hands is near my back. Not touching. Just near. Close enough that I can feel the warmth of it through my coat, which is themost distracting thing that has happened to me today, and today had some competition.
Because today, at the hospital, Maman announced she was moving in.
Notasked. Notsuggested. Announced. She was standing by my bed with her coat buttoned and her purse on her arm and she said, "C'est décidé, je viens m'installer chez toi pour la récupération," I'm coming to stay for the recovery, in the tone she uses when the universe has been consulted and agreed with her.
I opened my mouth.
Camille got there first.
"Maman," she said, from the doorway, coffee in one hand and phone in the other. "You can't move in. Nora's right here."
She tilted her coffee toward Nora.
The room went very still. Nora was mid-fold on a hospital blanket. She stopped. Maman looked at Nora. Nora looked at the blanket. I looked at the ceiling because the ceiling has been my safest visual option for two weeks.
"She's been here every day," Camille said. Factual. Devastating. "She installed a grab bar in his bathroom. From a YouTube video. Maman, you don't even know what a grab bar is."
"I know what a grab bar is," Maman said, but the fight had already left her voice.
Camille turned to Nora. "You're staying with him, right?"
It wasn't really a question. It was a statement dressed as a question, one that only leaves room for one answer, and the answer was built from two weeks of showing up and a bathroom she'd already renovated.
"If that's — yes," Nora said. "I'll be there."
"Bon," Maman said. She kissed my forehead. She kissed Nora's forehead. She pointed at me and said, "Tu écoutes cette fille" — you listen to this girl — and left.
So now Nora is behind me on the stairs, carrying my bag, and neither of us has said a word about Camille's ambush, and we are walking into my apartment together because my sister made it impossible to say no and I'm not sure either of us wanted to.
Step six. Step seven. Something inside my hip catches and I stop. Not because the pain is bad — it's always bad — but because for a second the bad changes shape and I need to recalibrate.
"You okay?" she says.
"Yeah." I take the next step. "Just counting."
