19. Liv
Chapter nineteen
Liv
Josh is moving the drying rack for no reason.
I’m straightening the feeding log for the third time.
It doesn’t help.
The conversation still hasn’t happened.
Not Wednesday evening, when the elevator doors slid open and Iris woke against Josh’s shoulder, furious and sweating, and the next twenty minutes were all triage. Not Thursday morning, when he had rounds and left before I was awake.
Not Thursday night, when Carter called twice and I was on the phone in the kitchen until eight-thirty, and by the time I wasn’t, it did not feel like the right moment to walk into the living room and finish a sentence that had been hanging since cold lamb ragu.
It is Friday. Reyes is due in twenty minutes.
Iris is in the bouncer by the window, one sock off, watching her own hand move. The folder is on the counter and the documents in the order Reyes will ask for them. Nine days in this kitchen. I can read what Josh needs before he asks.
“I’ll take the questions,” I say. “You handle the paperwork.”
Josh sets the drying rack in the cabinet. “Sure.”
He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t ask why.
I pick up the folder and check the order of the documents for the second time.
The buzzer goes at exactly the scheduled time.
I open the door. I know every document in that folder and what Reyes will want from each one. Reyes steps in and takes one pass of the apartment — Pack-N-Play against the far wall, feeding log on the cabinet door, Josh standing by the bouncer with Iris. She doesn’t stop moving.
Iris turns to study Reyes.
“Thank you for having me on short notice,” Reyes says.
“Of course,” I say. “Come in.”
She carries a clipboard and a folder. She sets the clipboard on the counter and opens the folder without asking if that’s all right.
She asks how long the arrangement has been in place.
“Nine days,” I say.
She asks who looks after Iris day-to-day.
“Josh,” I say. “With me.”
Josh’s eyes come to me for half a second.
Reyes writes it down.
She asks how shifts are covered when he has hospital hours. I walk her through the schedule — when he’s on, when I’m here, the window we built in between.
“When I have early rounds, Liv takes the last stretch of the night,” Josh says.
Reyes lifts her head from the form. “How often?”
His eyes come to mine. “Enough for her to know exactly how mad Iris gets at five-ten in the morning.”
My cheeks warm, and I can't blame the thermostat.
She makes a note and turns to the feeding log on the cabinet door. “Two sets of handwriting?”
“Both of ours,” Josh says, like the answer is obvious.
Reyes crosses to the Pack-N-Play and runs her pen along the frame. She checks the depth of the mattress, the distance to the wall. She doesn’t stop moving, even when she writes.
Iris makes a sound — not a cry, something lower. Reyes turns toward her.
“She’s comfortable.”
Not a question.
Reyes turns to me. “And your role in the arrangement?”
“In-home care from the first day,” I say. “Present for all significant events — the fever night, the hospital visit, the pediatric consult.”
Reyes makes a note. Josh glances at me, half a second, then back at the folder in his hands. He smooths the edge of a page. It doesn’t need smoothing.
“The medication log?” Reyes asks.
Josh already has it out.
Guardianship letter, medical records, logs. The same order Reyes has been moving through the questions. He slides the medication log across the counter before I can reach for it.
Neither of us tracked the moment the kitchen became a place where he knows my systems and I know his.
Nine days.
We have a system. I know when he’s made a second pot of coffee and he knows when I’ve moved something and left it in the wrong place.
He picks up his coffee and keeps his eyes on the cup.
Iris reaches for Reyes’s clipboard and misses by several inches.
Reyes closes the medication log and makes another note. Then she looks at both of us.
“If the current letter needs to be extended — if the medical picture requires it — who has availability for continued care coverage?”
Josh and I look at each other.
Iris is quiet in the bouncer behind Reyes, one hand up, tracking something on the ceiling.
“We’d address that if the timeline requires it,” I say.
His eyes stay on mine for one more second.
Reyes closes her folder.
“The arrangement appears stable,” she says. “Documentation is thorough. No concerns today.” She clicks her pen once. “If the medical picture changes, I’ll need to be updated before the arrangement can continue formally. We’ll need to schedule a follow-up visit. You have my contact information.”
She crosses to the bouncer. “Goodbye, Iris.”
Iris gives the window her full attention.
Reyes allows it. She shakes our hands and the door closes behind her.
I’m still at the counter when Josh speaks.
“No concerns.”
“No concerns,” I say.
Iris is watching the window. She started with one sock on. She has none now.
I go to the counter and straighten the feeding log. Iris makes a low sound — the beginning of tired, the first signal before the full cry.
Josh picks her up and takes her to the Pack-N-Play. From the kitchen I can hear it, the settling sounds. The soft pat of his hand on her back. The quiet of a nap she doesn’t fight.
I fold the burp cloth.
Set it on the counter.
Fold it again before I put it away.
I wipe the section of counter near the sink, then realize it’s the same spot I already wiped. I put the cloth down.
Josh comes back out. He crosses to the center of the living room and stops in front of me. “You were evasive when she asked about what happens if we need an extension.”
I look at him. “I’m a lawyer.”
He laughs.
“I did that on purpose,” I say. “We’ve been so busy taking care of Iris, and you've been working, that we haven’t had time to discuss what the plan is if this extends past when I go back to work.”
This is the first time either of us has said the deadline out loud.
Once my PTO is over, I walk back into the office. The trial prep that’s already been pushed twice. The brief due the first week of next month. My desk, my calendar, my life, all waiting for me to become the person who can leave this apartment at eight in the morning and stay gone until dinner.
Josh either files for emergency FMLA or he hires someone.
There is no third option.
“Right,” Josh says.
“I can help on nights and weekends,” I say. “But—”
“But you can’t be the primary.”
“No.”
The folder is still on the counter behind me. The guardianship letter on top. The medication log underneath. Documentation of an arrangement with an end date.
Josh looks at that folder. Then he looks back at me.
“I know," he says. "I haven’t figured out what comes after yet,” he says. “But I know.”
“I should draft a follow-up summary for the file,” I say. “Something Reyes can use if the letter needs to be renewed.”
“Yeah,” Josh says.
He takes one step toward me.
His hand comes up slowly enough for me to step back. I don’t.
He brushes the hair off my cheek — the piece on the left side, the one with its own opinions and a long history of ignoring me.
“This one,” he says. “Never listens.”
His thumb leaves my cheek.
I still feel the place where it was.
Josh looks past me, toward the bookshelf.
One step and his hand goes straight to the spine.
Longitude.
In the spot it’s been for seven years. The book's cover is battered, soft at the edges, the spine worn from handling. It was in that spot the last night I was here before I stopped coming.
I gave it to him. He kept it.
He holds it and turns it in his hands.
I’m still at the counter. Both hands on the edge.
He opens the front cover.
He doesn’t read the inscription. He turns it toward me.
I read my own handwriting.
For when we finally have more time.
My grip tightens on the counter’s edge. My weight shifts forward without my deciding to.
I was twenty-eight when I wrote it. I thought time was the only thing standing between us. That we were just delayed. That the residency would end, the caseload would ease, and we would arrive somewhere on the other side of all of it.
I read the inscription and meet his eyes.
Josh says, “I never stopped hoping.”