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“Go before Deluca comes in here and drags you out.”
Cole picked up his duffel. He looked back once from the doorway. Ford didn’t smile or tell him everything would be fine.
Then Cole left. Ford stayed in the chair until he heard the bus pull away, then switched off the video room lights and went home.
The nurse had already started the fluid running into Ford’s arm when his phone rang. Cole’s name appeared on the screen, and Ford answered before the second vibration.
“Hey.”
“You sound normal,” Cole said.
Ford adjusted the thin hospital blanket over his lap. Nadine sat in the chair by the wall with her coat folded across her knees, politely pretending not to listen. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. More drugs. Less patience.”
“They haven’t given me anything good yet.”
Cole exhaled. The sound carried the noise of a hotel lobby behind him—voices, dishes, somebody calling for coffee. “How long?”
“Friedman already came in. The nurse said they’ll take me back soon.”
The answer left silence between them. Ford stared at the opening in the curtain and pictured the bed moving through it without Cole beside him. His pulse climbed high enough that he could feel it in his throat.
“Talk to me,” Ford said.
“About what?”
“Anything that isn’t happening in this room.”
The hotel noise grew quieter. “The first time I made pancakes for you and Charlotte, I burned the first batch.”
Ford shifted against the pillow. “You did not.”
“I buried them under the coffee grounds so neither of you would see them.”
Ford pictured Cole hiding ruined pancakes at the bottom of the trash before anyone came downstairs. The image loosened the pressure in his chest. “You ate three that morning.”
“Those were from the second batch.”
“What else haven’t you told me?”
Cole was smiling now. Ford could hear it. “I shrank your gray Stags sweatshirt.”
“Charlotte stole that.”
“After I shrank it enough that she could wear it like a dress. I also snapped the snow shovel last winter and replaced it before you got home.”
Ford closed his eyes and listened as Cole admitted to cracking one of the storage bins in the spare room and eating the last piece of Charlotte’s Halloween candy, then driving across town to replace it before she noticed.
The nurse came through the curtain and checked the line above Ford’s wrist. “They’re ready for you.”
His stomach turned hard enough that the edges of the room seemed to draw closer.
“Ford?”
“They’re taking me back.” Ford looked at Nadine. She stood and reached for his coat and phone charger. “Keep talking.”
Cole kept going, moving on to the travel mug he’d dropped in the rink parking lot and secretly replaced.
