Page 144 of Wrong Number Right Doctor

Dalton’s laugh comes again, shorter this time. “Many things were hard for Alester. He turned most of them into schedules.”

“That sounds mean.”

“It’s also accurate.”

I reach for the water. The nausea is less aggressive this morning, but it sits low in my stomach, listening. I take a careful sip. “Did his father like you more than him?”

Dalton looks at me then.

I immediately wish the question were smaller. “Sorry,” I say. “That was too blunt.”

“It was very you.”

“I don’t know if that’s a compliment.”

“It’s not not a compliment.”

“That’s also a Dalton answer.”

He folds his arms, leaning back against the counter. “I don’t know if he liked me more,” he says after a moment. “He listened to me more.”

I can see it in his face, though he would probably deny it if I said so. He’s not defending himself. He’s not apologizing either. He’s standing in my kitchen with bad toast cooling between us and giving me the least decorated version of a very complicated truth.

“Because you were his doctor,” I say.

“Because I told him the truth.”

“And Alester didn’t?”

“Alester told him what a son tells a father who is dying and furious about it.”

That shuts me up.

Dalton’s gaze moves away from mine, back toward the window over my sink. It’s a terrible window. It faces another building, a brick wall, and someone’s air conditioner. Still, he looks at it like there might be something there worth seeing.

“I told him what his body could and couldn’t survive,” he says. “I told him when treatment stopped being treatment and became punishment. I told him no when he wanted yes. He hated me for it. Then he trusted me for it.”

I think about Alester’s calm face, his precise words, the way he said I was his son without asking for sympathy. I think I understand a little more now. Not enough. Maybe not even correctly. But enough to know that Dalton is not just Alester’s doctor, and Alester is not just the man with the contract.