“You look beautiful.”
She patted his knee. He couldn’t really feel it.
“Cindy, you’ve got to get me out of here.”
“What are you talking about?”
He knew he had blurted out the words with too much desperation. He looked down, slowed his breathing. He laughed and spoke in a slower voice.
“It’s been nearly two weeks. Now-a-days they kick people out in two days after major surgery, but I’m stuck here.” As he talked, he could hear the anxiety taking control again. “I feel like I’m in prison. I can’t sleep. I can’t get better.”
He glanced up and she had an utterly foreign look on her face.
“Let me come home, please.”
“You don’t even like the house.” She gave a light laugh. “‘Out in Maineville, middle of nowhere.’ That’s what you used to say. What’s the first thing you did when we separated? Moved back here to the city. Do you know how dangerous it is? A girl from our department had her purse snatched by a black kid just yesterday. I was walking down Court Street and there was this group of young, black men ahead of me. One of them bent down and a gun fell out of his pants! He just picked it up like nothing had happened. I dread the drive in here every day. But somehow you like it.”
“I say a lot of silly things.” Will smiled and looked down again, studying the bruises on his hands and forearms left by needles from IVs and blood tests. “My roommate needs constant care. Poor guy. They come in every hour to give him treatments. I can’t sleep at night.”
“Honey, I can’t handle you. You can’t even walk.”
“I’m going to walk. I stood up today.”
“That’s wonderful!”
“They rolled me onto this platform with parallel bars, and one physical therapist on each end, and I was actually able to stand. I’d almost forgotten I was tall. I thought about the movie where the mad scientist says, ‘It’s alive!’’” She didn’t laugh.
He sat there remembering the strange triumph, of doing something people do unthinkingly, the feeling of a stranger’s legs lifting him, very tentatively, as if they could change their muscled minds at any moment and return to the stranger, leaving him with the dead weights attached to his torso and the long fall to the floor.
“You’re doing great,” she said, not meeting his eyes. Her smile didn’t seem genuine. He used to kid her and call it her “sales smile” for the bank. Then even the sales smile vanished. “Julius came to see me today. At the bank. He said you’re trying to investigate the murder of that doctor.”
