Joachim wakes with a start when he hears a door close. The room is dark and it takes him a minute to realize he’s on the sofa, not in bed, and then another to remember why. Helena. The doctor. He was supposed to be up waiting for her call, ready to pick her up. He must’ve drifted off. It was such a long day. He feels for his phone but it’s lost somewhere in the sofa cushions. He has a crick in his neck.
“Helena, is that you?” Outside, the sky is completely dark. What time is it? How long did her appointment take?
“Shhh, Joachim, go back to sleep.” He hears her uneven steps sliding across the floor. Is he imagining it or did she slur her words? No, she’s just tired. She had to get to the doctor’s office and get back all by herself. Still, something doesn’t make sense here. Why would she tell him to go back to sleep when he’s on the sofa, not even covered with a blanket, so obviously waiting for her?
“Turn the light on,” he says, sitting up, somehow not quite able to stand. “I have to get in bed, anyway.”
Another moment of darkness—is she hesitating or feeling for the switch?—and then the lights come on. Her face is flushed, her hair tousled, half out of its ponytail. One leg of her pants is rolled up to expose pale skin where her cast used to be, and the thin silhouette of her arm under her sweater shows that that one’s gone, too.
“Your casts,” he says, sinking back into the sofa cushions.
“Yeah, I got them off. They did some X-rays and my bones were healed.”
He feels himself overflowing with a warm gratitude he could never express to Helena or anyone, a prayer answered before he dared to make it. She really was at the doctor’s office. It must not be as late as it looks. It’s starting to get dark earlier.
“How do you feel?”
“Good,” she says, without moving from her position by the door. “My ankle’s still pretty sore, but at least I can walk around.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come pick you up. I must’ve fallen asleep waiting. What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” she says, almost before the question is out of his mouth, as if she’d been waiting for it. “I was so hungry after the doctor’s that I stopped to get something to eat.” She must know how her voice sounds, because she adds, “I had a couple glasses of wine to take the edge off my ankle, but I guess I’m not really used to drinking more than a glass anymore, because it went straight to my head.”
There was something else strange, something he meant to ask her about before he fell asleep. Then he remembers: that crutch lying in the entryway of the house, abandoned. He would’ve worried if he hadn’t just heard from her that she was in a taxi. “Was that your crutch downstairs?”
“Oh,” she says, shuffling into the kitchen. “Yeah. I didn’t want to take it in the cab with me, so I left it there.”
Another answer that makes sense, so that’s okay. Or it should be. He hears the faucet running as she pours herself a glass of water, but he can only see her as a silhouette because she left the overhead light off in the kitchen. Shaking off his stupor, he gets up to get ready for bed.
When he comes out of the bedroom in his pajamas, she’s locked herself in the bathroom. He finds his phone on the floor beneath the sofa and sets his alarm for the next morning. He’s surprised to see that it’s after midnight. How late was the doctor’s office open, and how long was Helena at a restaurant by herself? The strangest part is that he has no missed calls. Not only did she not ask him to pick her up from the doctor’s office, but she didn’t even ask him to meet her for dinner. And it wasn’t a quick dinner, was it? Not just something she grabbed on her way back. She sat down in a restaurant, ate, and had a few glasses of wine. By herself?
He settles into bed and closes his eyes against the swarming, bewildering darkness around him. Maybe she met a friend for dinner. Why doesn’t she say so? Maybe she just isn’t saying much because he was so tired; maybe she’ll tell him about it tomorrow. Maybe.
He hears the bathroom door open, the bedroom door open and close, feels her weight sinking in next to him with the cautiousness of someone trying not to wake a sleeper. There’s nothing he can accuse her of. He doesn’t even know what to be afraid of now, but he is, very definitely, afraid.
“Helena,” he whispers, trying and failing to keep the urgency out of his voice.
“Mm-hmm?” She’s tipsy, tired, comfortable in bed. He shouldn’t bother her but he can’t help it. He has to say something, anything. He has to somehow get ahold of her in this strange, shifting darkness. Otherwise she might not be there when he wakes up.
“Let’s go away together,” he says.
“What?” She’s already drifting away from him, going away all by herself.
“This weekend. Friday, after work. Let’s go away for the weekend.” The idea forms piece by piece in his mind until it seems already real, inevitable. “We can stay at some country inn in Brandenburg or Meck-Pomm, catch the last sunny days. Just the two of us. We can finally have some time to talk.”
“This weekend?” she asks, and her voice is suddenly harder, no longer muffled by wine or drowsiness. “Are you sure?”
Her wariness startles him. She always wanted to go away for the weekend; one of her constant complaints was that they never took any trips together. And it’s not like he’s talking about hiking, just a couple days of sitting out by some lake, watching the clouds pass. And talking, having to talk, because there’ll be nothing else to do.
“Of course I’m sure. I’ll rent a car and pick you up after work on Friday. We can come back Sunday.”
“Okay,” she says. “If you want.”
Through the darkness, he feels her awake beside him for a long time after.