23. Elena
Elena
The apartment changes back in stage. Bed, monitors, supply boxes, the entire temporary medical annex of my life packed into rolling cases and taken away.
I could have treated it like an event. A transition.
A clear line between before and after. Instead, it happens slowly enough to feel personal.
First, the extra stand by the bed disappears, then the monitor that had been humming softly in the corner for so long I stopped hearing it as separate from the room.
The hospital bed goes last, wheeled out by two men in navy uniforms who are polite and silent and careful not to meet my eyes for too long, as if they know they are dismantling something more than equipment and would rather not be implicated in it.
By noon, my bedroom looks like my bedroom again. Or the version of it that existed before everything narrowed into crisis mode.
My own bed is remade. The side table is cleared. The cables are gone. No monitors. No clipboard. No medical tray. The room is larger without all of it. Airier. Freer.
I stand in the doorway after they leave, looking at the bed as if it has betrayed me by becoming ordinary again.
That’s melodramatic, even for me. The more practical interpretation is obvious.
This is good. Stabilization is good. Reduced risk is good.
The fact that my life no longer requires machinery and hour-by-hour supervision is, objectively, an improvement.
I can move more. I can shower without asking permission.
I can make tea without someone monitoring how long I’m on my feet.
I’m not stupid enough to miss the value of any of that.
And still the room feels wrong.
Too open. Too quiet. As if something essential has been removed along with the equipment and the walls haven’t yet figured out how to hold the emptiness properly.
Cormac is in the sitting room while the last of it is taken out, signing forms on the dining table with the same aloof concentration he brings to everything.
The sleeves of his shirt are rolled to his forearms. His jacket is already over the back of the chair, his overnight bag on the floor beside it.
Packed.
I noticed the bag when he set it there this morning. It’s a symbol what today really is, beyond the medical supplies and the logistical adjustments and the return to “modified activity.”
Cormac is leaving.
I guess because I wasn’t brave enough to tell him to stay.
The final technician wheels the stand toward the door. “All set, Doctor.”
Cormac signs the form without looking up. “Leave the updated support wedges.”
“Of course.” The man nods and leaves. The apartment door closes behind him with a soft click, and suddenly it is just us.
The room feels strange without an audience. Too exposed. Too bare.
Cormac caps the pen, places it precisely beside the papers, and rises.
“You are cleared for limited movement,” he says, as if he has not already told me this twice today.
“No lifting, no overexertion, no prolonged standing. Continue hydration. Meals as scheduled. Monitoring remains twice daily for the next week, then reassessment.”
I lean one shoulder against the bedroom doorway and fold my arms. “You left out ‘don’t do anything stupid.’”
His gaze lifts to mine. “I considered that covered by the rest.”
“Generous.”
“I’m known for it.”
That should make me smile. It doesn’t quite get there.
He picks up the overnight bag. The movement is efficient, unhesitating. He had clearly decided the exact sequence of departure hours ago. Perhaps yesterday. Perhaps the moment the readings first suggested I was stable enough to no longer justify his presence here.
Of course he had. I hate that I know that about him now.
“Walsh will handle your clinic review tomorrow,” he says.
Something in me tightens. “Walsh,” I repeat.
“Yes.”
“You’re not coming.”
“No.”
The answer is simple enough to be irritating. I stare at him, waiting for more. Some explanation, perhaps. Some note about schedules or responsibility or the advisability of returning to normal oversight now that the emergency phase has passed.
He offers none of it. Because he doesn’t need to. Because, in his mind, the facts are self-explanatory.
I shift my weight, immediately feeling the pull low in my abdomen that reminds me I’m not as recovered as I would like to believe. He notices. Of course he notices.
“Sit down,” he says.
“There he is,” I quip.
He ignores that. “You’ve been standing too long.”
“I’m fine.”
“No.”
It should not affect me, that word from him. That automatic contradiction. That refusal to let me characterize my own condition inaccurately just because I find honesty inconvenient.
And yet…
I sink down onto the sofa. Arguing would only prolong this. Besides, he’s annoyingly right.
He sets the bag down by the door but does not leave immediately.
Instead, he crosses to the table, straightens the stack of updated instructions already aligned in a neat square, and moves the vase of white flowers half an inch away from the edge.
The gesture is so absurdly familiar now that my chest tightens around it before I can stop the reaction.
“You know,” I say, because silence is suddenly impossible, “most people would just say goodbye.”
He glances at me. “I’m not going abroad.”
“That’s comforting.”
“It should be.”
The answer lands more softly than he probably intends. Or maybe he intends it exactly that way. With him, intention is rarely absent. The question is only ever whether I’m seeing the whole of it.
He comes toward me then, just enough that I have to tilt my head slightly to keep looking at him from the sofa.
He studies me the way he studies charts and symptoms and risk assessments.
Too closely, too calmly, as if everything relevant can be learned from observation if he gives it enough attention.
“You’re tired,” he says.
“Thank you for the diagnosis.”
“You’ll rest this afternoon.”
“Is that an instruction or an assumption?”
“Yes.”
That oblique answer, so like him, does make me smile. Briefly and against my better judgment. His gaze flicks to my mouth, then back to my eyes quickly enough that I could pretend I imagined it.
I don’t.
The air shifts in that tiny, freighted way I have learned to dread because it never leads anywhere I can safely follow.
Then he steps back.
“The clinic will message your updated schedule within the hour,” he says. “There’s a grocery delivery at four. Niamh arranged replacement linens for the ones removed with the hospital bed. Your supplements have been reordered.”
I stare at him.
“What?” he says.
“You’ve planned my afternoon.”
“I’ve prevented inefficiency.”
“Same thing.”
“It isn’t.”
His hand closes around the strap of the overnight bag.
This time, when he lifts it, there is no pause after.
He goes to the door. I should say something.
Something normal. Something adult and proportionate to the situation.
“Thank you,” perhaps, though that phrase feels too loaded now.
Or “see you tomorrow,” which is untrue and both of us know it. Or nothing, which is probably safest.
But what comes out is, “That’s it?”
He stops with his hand on the handle.
The apartment goes very quiet. When he turns back, his expression has not altered enough for anyone else to notice. I notice.
“That,” he says, “depends on what you think this is.”
The question is too loaded for the middle of the day and a living room full of ordinary furniture. I look away first, annoying myself immediately.
“Right,” I say. “Very on-brand.”
For one second, I think he might answer that. Then he opens the door. “You’ll follow the activity restrictions.”
“Of course.”
“Good.”
And then he’s gone. The door closes softly behind him. No drama. No hesitation. Just absence entering the room all at once like a pressure change.
I sit there for a full minute, listening to nothing. Then another.
It’s ridiculous how quickly the apartment expands around the lack of him.
The silence becomes larger, less ordered.
Not peaceful. Just empty in a way it was not this morning.
I can hear the fridge in the kitchen. A car outside.
A door somewhere else in the building. Tiny noises that have no business sounding so loud.
I tell myself, very firmly, that this is a good development.
I am no longer bleeding. The placenta has stabilized.
The crisis is over. He should not be here.
There is no reason for him to be here. The fact that he is not here is evidence of improvement and appropriate professional boundaries and every other tidy phrase this situation should logically support.
I know all of that. The problem is that none of it changes how the room feels.
Or how I do.
* * *
By four o’clock I have made tea, ignored it, reheated it, and checked my phone six times for messages that are not from him and would not be from him even if I checked it sixty times more.
The clinic message arrives exactly when he says it will.
Updated monitoring schedule: 9:00 AM clinic review with Dr. Walsh. Evening remote check-in via app. Activity restrictions attached. Diet instructions revised for week 23. Please confirm receipt.
No greeting. No signature. No trace of a human.
And yet, I know.
The timing is too exact. The instructions too specifically adjusted to the last three weeks of my life.
Rest intervals built around the habits that formed while he was here.
Fluid reminders at hours he knows I forget.
A note in the attachment that says to avoid prolonged sitting without lumbar support, which could have come from any clinician, but he is the one who kept correcting the angle of the damned chair cushions every time I slouched.