Chapter 12 #2
He doesn't open it.
I put away the insurance card. I take off my coat.
I go back to the kitchen table and open my laptop and stare at the Bellini slides.
The color palette is still empty. I close that tab and open Derek's revision 8 instead — at least Derek's problems have solutions, even if the solutions change hourly.
An hour passes. Maybe more. From the living room I hear the sounds of a man who is alone even though he's not: the scroll of a phone screen, the shift of a body adjusting against pillows, the tap of his thumb on the armrest. Neither rhythmic nor nervous. Just — happening.
I work. Or I sit in front of my laptop and perform the act of working, which involves typing and backspacing and clicking between tabs with the purposeful energy of someone who is definitely not listening to every sound from the couch.
The Bellini proposal gains two slides that are mostly placeholder text. The color palette remains empty.
At some point I make dinner. Reheated soup.
I bring him a bowl with the correct spoon — the deeper one, not the flat one he dislikes but won't say he dislikes.
He says thank you. I say you're welcome.
We eat with the television on. The television is neutral territory.
A nature documentary. Animals that don't need to explain why they're in each other's space.
My phone buzzes. Sophie. How did it go today?
I type: Good news. Bones healing ahead of schedule.
I add a smiley face. I delete the smiley face.
I add a thumbs-up. I send it. Then I stare at the message and realize I don't know how to explain to my best friend that the best possible medical outcome feels like being handed a countdown timer and told to be happy about it.
Sophie replies: That's amazing!! You okay?
Yeah, I type. Just tired.
I put my phone down. From the couch, I hear Ethan shift — that particular adjustment, the one that means the meds are wearing off.
"Pain coming back?" I ask.
"A little."
"I can get the—"
"I'll get it later."
He'll get it later. He'll get it himself. Three words, and I know what they mean because I've been reading these words for days now — I got it. I can do it. I'll get it later. You don't have to come every day.
I try once more. "The doctor said ahead of schedule. That's really—"
"Yeah." He picks up his phone. "She did."
The sentence doesn't land so much as evaporate. I watch it disappear into the space between us — a space that used to be three feet and is now the size of everything we're not saying.
It's the door again.
Every ending in this apartment happens at the door.
I put on my coat. I check that everything is done — pills on the table, water refilled, phone charging on the arm rest where he can reach it, Bagel fed, Poutine's bowl topped up because Poutine is the kind of cat who will stare at you from whatever high surface she's colonized until her bowl is exactly full.
He's on the couch. The magazine is on the coffee table, still closed. The spine is uncracked.
"Okay," I say. "I'm heading out."
He looks up. For one second I think I see something — a flicker, a pull, the shadow of a word that starts to form and then doesn't. But it's gone before I can catch it, and maybe it was never there.
Maybe I just wanted it to be there because wanting things is apparently the one skill I can't design out of myself.
"So — tomorrow?" I say. "I'll come by in the morning. Same time."
He opens his mouth. Closes it. Then:
"You don't have to come every day."
The words land very quietly. Like snow on snow. Like words that were always going to be said and were just waiting for the right silence to fall into.
"I — what?"
"I mean—" He runs a hand over his face. "You've got the Bellini thing. That proposal. And Derek's still sending stuff, right? You've got your own — you've got a lot going on. You don't need to keep—"
He stops. He's not looking at me. He's looking at the spot on the coffee table where the magazine is, the one I brought him that he didn't open.
"I just mean," he says, quieter, "you don't have to."
Every word is kind. Every word is reasonable. Every word is a door being held open for me, politely, gently, and he's even doing the work for me.
I don't need you here.
"Okay," I say. My voice doesn't break. I'm proud of that. I am the woman who watched herself come apart in the mirror and put herself back together and is still standing here, still upright, still capable of the syllable okay delivered at the correct weight.
"I'll just — yeah. I'll text you."
"Okay."
Two okays. The entire dismantling of whatever this was, conducted in the most civilized syllable in the English language.
I turn toward the door. I'm reaching for the handle when something warm presses against my ankle. I look down.
Bagel. Ten pounds of orange against my boot.
He rubs his head along the side of my calf and looks up, and his eyes are the particular shade of gold that means nothing and everything, and his purr starts — slow, deliberate, the specific frequency cats use when they've decided you belong to them, which is not your decision to argue with.
He doesn't care about eight-to-ten-week timelines. He doesn't care about healing bones or insurance cards or the correct distance to stand in an examination room. He just knows I'm at the door, and the door is wrong.
I crouch. I scratch the spot behind his ear — the one that makes his purr double in volume, the one I found by accident during the first week and have been using since like a cheat code. His head tilts into my hand. His body is warm and certain.
"See you later, buddy," I say.
I stand. I don't look at Ethan. If I look at Ethan I will see the thing I can't unsee: that this is the shape of the end, and the end is quiet.
I open the door. The cold hits immediately — the particular February cold of a Montreal walk-up, where the landing outside your door is still winter.
From inside the apartment, I hear Bagel meow. Once. Short. Not distressed — questioning. The sound of a small animal who doesn't understand why someone just left.
The door clicks shut behind me.
I stand on the landing. One second. Two. The light above the door is the kind that buzzes and flickers and makes everything look like a memory of itself. Through the door I can hear — nothing. No footsteps. No crutches. No voice calling me back.
Then, very faintly: a sound I almost miss. A single thud — dull, heavy — like a crutch being set down hard. Or dropped. Or thrown at something soft.
I wait.
Nothing else comes.
I put my hands in my pockets. I walk down the fourteen stairs. I step onto the sidewalk.
The snow is still falling. The straight-down kind.
I start walking toward the bus stop, and the distance between me and his door gets wider with every step, and his bones are healing, and the good news is the worst kind of bad news — the kind you can't argue with.