Mark’s face was quiet when he stepped out of the clinic. He looked like a man who had been carved into pieces and put back together in the dark—more solid and less certain. “He’ll be fine,” he said, even though his hands were shaking when he lit a cigarette and then remembered he couldn’t because the clinic’s no-smoking sign was stupidly everywhere. “We’ll sort this. We have insurance. I’ll drive him to the specialist. I’ll talk to the council.”
I watched him through a lens that had been polished by months of fear and fierce love. There was fury at the accident—at sawdust left on a step, at a misboot, at the break in rhythm—and a deeper, dull terror: a broken crew hand meant pay stops somewhere in the chain. Layoffs, debt, compromise. The small business could recover from many things, but
