Chapter 6 #2
“I would still help with your recovery if you wanted. I’d make sure you had somewhere safe. But I won’t use the past to trap you.”
Noah stared at me for a long time.
The nurse shifted near the door.
Finally he said, “I didn’t ask you to leave.”
“No.”
“I asked what if.”
“And I answered.”
He looked dissatisfied.
I did not know whether that was good or terrible.
The nurse cleared her throat.
“I’ll be back at three,” I said.
Noah turned toward the window.
As I reached the door, he spoke.
“Reid.”
I looked back.
He was still facing away.
“I don’t think you’re unattractive.”
I laughed all the way to the elevator.
Caleb looked up from the office desk when I returned to the yard.
He took one look at my face.
“What happened?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re smiling.”
“I’m allowed.”
“Did he remember?”
“No.”
Caleb’s expression fell slightly.
“Something else happened.”
“What?”
“He insulted my appearance.”
“That sounds promising.”
“He said I wasn’t difficult to look at.”
Caleb stared.
Then he grinned. “He’s flirting with you.”
“He was searching for a word.”
“He found one.”
“He has aphasia.”
“He has taste.”
Owen appeared in the doorway holding a box of hinges.
“What did Noah do?”
“Apparently he still thinks Reid is handsome.”
“I did not say handsome.”
Caleb ignored me. “He called him not difficult to look at.”
Owen nodded thoughtfully. “That is very Noah.”
I lowered myself into the desk chair.
For two hours, I dealt with unpaid invoices, insurance forms, supplier calls, and the mountain of mail Caleb had been stacking in increasingly judgmental piles.
The work steadied me.
At three, I returned to the hospital.
Noah was tired but calm. He let me sit near him while he slept, and when he woke, he asked me to read.
I chose a sailing magazine.
“You hate sailing magazines,” he said.
“You remember that?”
“No. You look annoyed.”
“I prefer practical journals.”
“This is practical.”
“This article is about choosing table linens for a yacht.”
“Read it.”
I did.
The following days developed a rhythm.
Physical therapy in the morning.
Rest.
Speech and cognitive work in the afternoon.
Scans, examinations, medication changes, meals.
Noah stood for five seconds.
Then ten.
He transferred into a wheelchair.
He learned to steady himself when the room tilted.
His headaches remained unpredictable. His language faltered when he was tired. Some evenings, he could not remember what he had eaten at lunch. Other times, he repeated entire conversations from the day before.
He smiled when I arrived.
At first, I told myself it was because I brought coffee.
Then one morning, I entered without it because the café machine was broken.
He smiled anyway.
The photographs remained on his table.
He rearranged them often.
Family in one stack.
The yard in another.
Marlowe and the apartment together.
Photographs of us lay nearest the bed.
I never mentioned it.
A week after Leah’s visit, I arrived to find the room empty.
The bed had been stripped.
Noah’s magazines were gone.
The photographs remained on the table, but panic did not care about evidence.
I dropped my bag.
A nurse I did not recognize looked up from the linen cart.
“Where is he?”
“He go.”
“Where?”
She pointed vaguely toward the corridor.
My pulse thundered.
“Where did Noah go?”
Another nurse hurried in.
“Reid. It’s all right. He’s showering.”
I gripped the bed rail.
The first nurse smiled, apparently unaware that she had nearly stopped my heart.
“They took him ten minutes ago,” the second nurse said. “He had a rough night and wanted to freshen up.”
“What happened?”
“Nightmares.”
The word changed the air.
“About the accident?”
“He couldn’t describe them. He woke disoriented and pulled against his arm brace.”
“Did he hurt himself?”
“No new damage. He’s sore.”
I sat because my knees had begun to weaken.
“How long has he been having nightmares?”
“A few nights.”
“No one told me.”
“He asked us not to.”
I looked at her.
“He asked?”
“He said you already worried too much.”
Something inside me twisted.
The nurse replaced the pillowcase.
“He watches the clock in the morning,” she said.
“What?”
“Before you arrive.”
I stared.
“He knows roughly when you come. He listens for the elevator.”
The nurse gave me a knowing smile and pushed the cart away.
I sat with that information until the door opened.
Noah returned in a wheelchair, his injured side carefully supported. His hair was damp. Someone had shaved the untouched side of his face, though the skin around the healing cuts remained uneven.
He looked exhausted.
He also looked at me immediately.
“There you are,” he said.
The words were ordinary.
They reached me like sunlight.
I stood.
An orderly and I helped transfer him to the bed. Noah’s good leg trembled. By the time he settled against the pillows, sweat shone across his forehead.
I adjusted the blanket.
“You all right?”
“Tired.”
“The nurse said you had a bad night.”
His eye shifted away.
“You didn’t need to tell them not to tell me.”
“You worry.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want more.”
“You are not adding to anything.”
His mouth tightened.
Dr. Whitcomb entered behind the orderly.
“No therapy today,” she said. “Rest, fluids, minimal stimulation.”
Noah nodded.
“He should probably have a quiet morning,” she told me.
“I can leave.”
“No.”
The word came from Noah.
We both looked at him.
His eye was already closed.
“He can stay,” he said. “Quiet.”
I forgot how to breathe.
Dr. Whitcomb’s gaze moved between us.
“Quiet,” she repeated.
“I can do quiet.”
Noah’s right hand moved over the blanket until it found mine.
His fingers closed.
“Stay.”
“I will.”
Dr. Whitcomb left us.
Within minutes, Noah was asleep.
I sat beside him and held his hand.
His bruises had nearly disappeared. The surgical line remained visible through the short regrowth of hair, pale skin broken by small dark marks where staples had been removed. His face looked more like itself every day.
The life behind it remained altered.
I watched him sleep and allowed myself the thoughts I refused while he was awake.
I hated the road.
I hated the driver, though investigators had said he had done everything possible once the load shifted. I hated the company that had failed to inspect the chain. I hated rain on pavement and the flatbed’s weight and the geometry of one bend in the road.
Mostly, I hated my helplessness.
Noah had spent years building independence after leaving Denver. He had been proud of competence, of being useful, of needing little from anyone.
Now strangers helped him bathe.
He needed permission to leave a room.
He had to ask for objects placed three feet away.
And when he woke frightened in the dark, he did not remember the man who had promised to come when called.
Yet he had asked me to stay.
The request was fragile.
I held it carefully.
When he woke near noon, I was reading aloud from one of his technical journals.
“You skipped,” he murmured.
I looked up. “You were asleep.”
“Still heard.”
“You want the section on corrosion rates?”
“Yes.”
“It’s mostly charts.”
“Read.”
I resumed.
His eye remained half-open, resting on my face rather than the page.
After several paragraphs, he interrupted.
“I like your voice.”
My words stopped.
Noah frowned. “Why’d you stop?”
“No reason.”
“Keep going.”
I read until my vision blurred.
By the following morning, his fatigue had eased.
Two days later, he asked to use the wheelchair again.
Priya brought one after therapy.
“You can go to the family lounge,” she said. “Ten minutes.”
“Outside,” Noah replied.
“That depends on the light.”
“Cloudy.”
Priya looked at me. “You checked?”
“I always check.”
Noah’s mouth curved.
They helped him into the chair.
I supported his left arm, adjusted the pelvic cushion, and tucked a blanket around his legs.
“No racing,” Priya said.
“I’m an excellent driver,” I told her.
Noah glanced up at me. “I’ve seen your van.”
For half a second, my heart stopped.
Then I realized he meant a photograph.
Priya saw the change in my face.
Noah did too.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You thought I remembered.”
I could not lie.
“Yes.”
His gaze lowered.
“Sorry.”
“Stop.”
He looked up.
“You never apologize for my hope.”
The corridor was busier than usual.
People glanced at Noah as we passed. Some looked away quickly. Others stared at the scar, the brace, the careful arrangement of his injured body.
My hands tightened on the wheelchair handles.
Noah noticed.
“Don’t fight anyone.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
“You look like it.”
“I always look like this.”
“No. You look harder.”
We reached the courtyard.
Clouds softened the daylight. Wind moved through ornamental grasses near the path, carrying the scent of wet soil.
Noah drew in a deep breath.
His shoulders lowered.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
I wheeled him toward a sheltered alcove beneath a cedar pergola.
A raised garden bed stood nearby, full of rosemary and winter pansies. Rainwater still jeweled the leaves.
Noah looked toward the patch of grass beyond the path.
“Can we go there?”
“The chair will sink.”
“Close.”
I brought him to the edge.
He stared at the ground.
“What?”
“My foot.”
I understood.
His left foot rested on the support. The right remained protected.
I knelt and eased off his slipper.
The air was cool.
“Tell me if this hurts.”
He nodded.
I lowered his bare left foot until the sole met the damp grass.
Noah inhaled sharply.
His toes curled.
For several seconds, he said nothing.
Then his eye closed.
“That good?”
“Yes.”
His answer came like a prayer.
I sat on the low stone border beside the chair.
He moved his foot through the grass, feeling the blades against his skin.
“Everything inside is plastic,” he said.
“Mostly.”
“Even the air.”
“I don’t think the air is plastic.”
“Feels like it.”
We sat without speaking.
A gull cried somewhere above the roof.
Cars passed beyond the courtyard wall.
The world smelled of rain and cedar.
Noah tipped his face toward the muted sky.
“I forgot weather.”
“You experienced it.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do.”
He remained still, eyes closed.
After a while, he spoke.
“They talked about discharge.”
I straightened.
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m telling you.”