Chapter 7 – Not Yet
637 Words
That decision was the only thing in the room that fully belonged to me, and I made it without breaking eye contact, because some part of my body knew — with the same certainty it had used to write trades for seven years — that the way I crossed this floor was going to decide what kind of woman I was tomorrow.
I let the bench take my weight one second longer. Then I straightened.
The carpet was warm under my feet. My left hand stayed against my chest. The phone stayed clipped between the fingers of my right.
I walked.
Four steps. Five. The room tilted half an inch and then stopped. I let the back of my right hand brush the edge of the dresser at the midpoint — the way a dancer touches a barre to confirm the floor, not to lean on it.
I reached the bed.
He had not moved.
The hand he had been offering folded itself back to his side without comment, as if the gesture were a draft he had elected not to send. He watched the entire crossing the way someone watches a procedure they have authorized but cannot perform themselves.
I sat on the edge of the mattress. My weight settled. The hem of the T-shirt rode up over my knees and I tugged it down without looking.
"There," I said. "I'm in bed."
"You are sitting on it."
"That is a technical distinction."
"It is the only kind I have ever been interested in."
He crossed the room. Three steps, no more. He did not touch me. He took the chair Renate had used, angled it toward the bed, and sat — not close enough to be presumption, not far enough to be performance. His hands rested on his thighs, palms flat, in a way that read more like an instruction to himself than a posture.
"You'll feel better lying back," he said.
"Why am I wearing your shirt?"
"You bled through yours. Nothing else in the house was the right size for a person."
The economy of it disarmed me before I could decide whether to be angry.
"Who undressed me?" I asked, because the question had been sitting under my ribs since the cedar.
"Helena. The night nurse. She has worked in private settings for seventeen years. She is downstairs; she will be back at six." A small pause, which on him registered as a courtesy. "I was not in the room."
I had not realized I had been holding the line of my shoulders against the answer until they let go.
"Lie back," he said.
I did. Slowly. The pillow accepted my head and the ceiling resumed being expensive.
He did not look away. His gaze had the same exact economy Renate's had — *checking, not consuming* — except that under Renate I had been a body, and under this man I was something I did not yet have a word for.
"Your pulse just dropped six beats," he said.
I turned my head a quarter inch.
"You can see that from there?"
"The room can." His mouth moved in a way that did not become a smile. "The monitor strip on your finger talks to the system. The system talks to my watch. It also talks to the doctor's tablet. Renate has access until eight a.m. So do I."
"And you are reading me."
"I am reading the room."
"Same thing."
"Not yet."
The *yet* did something to me I would have to examine in private, later, when my legs were working again.
He let the silence sit for a beat. Then he stood and crossed back toward the door — not to leave, I realized, but to give me the geometry to make the next decision without him standing over it.
- Writer
