"What kind of thing?"
"Administrative things."
Administrativethings. What the hell did that mean?
"He was kind," Mom said, into the silence. "Dr. Cross. When he came to find us. He was very calm and very clear and he—" She stopped. "He looked like he was sorry," she said. "In a real way."
I looked at the ceiling for a long time after that.
Nobody left.
That was the thing I kept coming back to, lying there in the Toronto hospital bed. Mom had her hand on my arm. Dylan was still at the wall, which was where Dylan was when there was nothing to fix and he was staying anyway.
Nobody left.
They were in a Toronto hospital room at midnight and nobody was leaving.
I looked at the ceiling.
He looked like he was sorry,Mom had said.In a real way.
Administrative things, Dylan had said.
The space where a lanyard should have been.
I closed my eyes.
Somewhere across the city, Nathan was doing something I didn't have the full picture of yet, and my head was a seven andcoming down, and the Morrison family was in the room, and I fell asleep thinking about all of it.
They were still there when I woke up.
My apartment.
Mom had cleaned it.
Not obviously—she hadn't rearranged anything, hadn't moved the game controllers or reorganized the shelves—but the takeout containers were gone and the laundry had been done and there was actual food in the fridge, not just condiments and wax cheese, actual food, things that required preparation and intention. This meant Mom had been to a grocery store and had opinions about what her son should be eating.
I was on the couch under a blanket that had also been washed, which I hadn't asked her to do, which was just Linda.
Dad was in the armchair watching a game with the volume at a level that was technically within my rest protocol parameters but that he kept threatening to lower every time I made a face. The faces were involuntary. The lights were still doing something. Not the Toronto something, not the eight, just—sensitive, the world slightly louder than usual at the edges.
"Stop making the face," Dad said. "I'll turn it down."
"I'm not making a face."
"You're making the face."
"I'm fine."
"You have a grade-three concussion."
"I know what I have."
"Then stop making the face," Dad said, and turned it down two units, which he'd been going to do anyway, and pretended he hadn't.
Dylan was in the kitchen with Mom, which was where Dylan always ended up when the family was together, helping with things that didn't need helping and listening to whatever she needed to say about whatever she needed to say it about. I could hear them in there. Low voices.
The Morrison family, in my apartment.
