I don't know how to stop. And he already has people who know where the bay leaves are.
The mirror is half-fogged now. The woman in the visible half has mascara tracks on her cheeks. The concealer missed a spot under her left eye.
She looks like me.
I close my eyes.
11
THE MIRROR
She's too good at this.
That's the thought that keeps circling. She handed me coffee this morning: perfectly timed, correct temperature, the mug placed at the exact point on the side table where I can reach it without twisting. She said "Morning" — light, easy, the tone of a person who slept well and woke up fine and has no residual damage from anything, least of all the kitchen floor.
It's been three days since the smoke alarm. Three days since she sat on my floor and cried and laughed and tried to tell my cat things she couldn't tell me. Three days since I sat next to her and didn't say the thing I should have said, and now three days of watching her rebuild the wall I almost saw behind, and this version — this post-crash version — is better than before. More seamless. Funnier.
Yesterday she organized my fridge. Labels. Hand-written, in her neat lettering, on two of the shelves. I have never, in my life, organized a fridge.
She's getting ready to leave. She just hasn't said it yet.
The morning goeshow mornings go now.
She brings me my pills with a glass of water. The pills are already sorted into the correct doses — two white, one blue, the painkiller she broke in half because the full dose makes me nauseous and she noticed this before I mentioned it. She sets the glass down. She doesn't sit.
"I'm going to work on the bistro stuff for a bit," she says. She walks to the kitchen table, opens her laptop, and starts typing.
I watch her from the couch.
She could be anywhere right now. She could be in a coffee shop, at her own desk, in her own apartment with her own fridge that doesn't need someone else's labels. The typing is steady. Fast. Focused. She's leaning into the screen how she leans into things that matter to her — slightly forward, shoulders engaged, the rest of the room ceasing to exist.
She's dying to get back to her life.
I try to reach the glass of water without groaning. I groan.
"Nailed it," I mutter.
"You okay?"
"Fine." I take a sip. I set it down. The motion sends a dull burn through my left side — not the sharp kind, not anymore, but the deep ache that means the bone is healing and is very unhappy about it. "Just — yeah. Fine."
She looks at me for one second. Then she goes back to typing.
I should be glad she's working. I should be glad she has a life outside of this — outside of me and my crutches and the unfiled insurance forms and the slow-motion project of getting a grown man to the bathroom and back without incident.
I'm not glad.
I'm whatever the opposite of glad is, and it has the exact shape of her sitting six meters away looking like she already left.
The bandage changehappens after lunch.
We've done this before — three times now, since the home care nurse only comes twice a week and the incision site needs attention in between. It should be routine. Remove old dressing, clean the area, apply new gauze, tape the edges, done. Five minutes. Maybe seven.
I tried to do it myself the first time. Twenty minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, a roll of tape in one hand, a death-grip on the counter with the other, trying to find an angle that didn't involve twisting my pelvis into something the physiotherapist would callinadvisable. I couldn't see half the incision. I couldn't reach the other half. I failed.
So now she does it. And it is not routine.
It is seven minutes of her being close enough that I can smell her shampoo and feel the warmth of her hands through the nitrile gloves she bought from the pharmacy, and every second of those seven minutes is something I survive rather than experience.
