THIRTEEN
SOMETIMES I’D FIND HIM WAITING near the hospital for me to finish my work. There must have been times he’d wait without reason but it wasn’t the same as the waiting that you’re doing, Jude. I wasn’t captive to a brain incident then and locked in with my thoughts like I am now. One day I’d stayed on past the end of my shift to help Ruth and when I came out I saw him hunched over his work under a tall pine. His body was like a question mark. I wonder how long he’d been there and if he even understood the flow of the shifts. It was late but the long light of midsummer in the north was only starting to fade. Children were awake past their bedtimes, zigzagging on the road in front of me and chasing each other in the last of the light. Their mothers’ voices called to them on the humid
