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Lincoln woke to shuffles outside his bedroom door, a woman's voice whispering, smells he'd missed. He sat up, then stifled a groan. The painkillers always wore off through the night—a good thing, he supposed, a way to judge his improvement from the day before.
Kali. Theo. He rubbed his head, an attempt to rub away the hours he hadn't slept, and looked at the clock. Six twenty. He reached for his crutches and made his way to the door. Stopped. No more coming out in boxers. Lincoln pulled on sweat pants and a t-shirt then opened the door. Romper bounded out of the room.
Lincoln followed the dog. “Oh, hello.” Kali turned and leaned against the stove, looking like someone who'd been caught in the act. The act of what, though, making breakfast? “I'm sorry. We didn't mean to wake you.”
Lincoln didn't reply. He looked at Romper, head snuggled in Theo's lap. Theo chuckled, one of the first sounds Lincoln had heard from the boy. Lincoln turned back to Kali. “Chocolate chip pancakes?”
“Our Friday morning treat. There's enough batter if you want some.”
She seemed different this morning. Softer. Shy, almost. Not like she owned the place.
Lincoln stepped closer. “They smell good.”
Kali turned back to the stove. “Take a seat.”
Lincoln felt an urge to wrap his arms around her, feel the curve of her waist under his fingertips. It was what you did when you woke up to a woman cooking you breakfast. But she wasn’t his woman, and she wasn’t cooking him breakfast. He was just getting leftovers. The urge fled quicker than it arrived.
Lincoln went to the cupboard next to the stove, keeping a respectable distance between his body and hers. He reached for a glass and his pills. Downed them.
She glanced over. “Still bad?”
“Not good.”
“Getting better?”
“A bit every day.”
She nodded. “Good.”
Theo glanced between them. Did he wonder why they were here? What this strange man had to do with their lives?
“Morning, bud.” Lincoln sat across from the boy.
Theo stared at him, his expression placid. He looked to his mother's back, then at Lincoln again.
“Sleep well?”
The boy's brow furrowed.
Lincoln looked to the table. A plate with three pancakes appeared in front of him. A plate with two in front of Theo. They were perfectly golden. “Uh, thanks.”
Kali gave a slight smile then turned back to the stove. “I leave for work in about a half hour. I'll take Theo to Mrs. Martin's. We'll be gone all day.”
Lincoln took a bite of pancake. It was good. Delicious. On birthdays his mother always made chocolate chip pancakes. How long had it been since he had one—Six years? Seven?
“I don't have a key, so—”
“When will you be back?”
Kali turned to the window, as if it were a hard question to answer. “Eight. Maybe eight-ten.”
“No problem.” Lincoln took another bite. “I'll try to get out and get an extra key made.”
She turned again. How did she do it, look so powerful, so in charge one moment and give a flash of uncertainty the next?
“Oh, I can do that tomorrow. Prevent you having to manoeuvre and—”
Lincoln raised a hand. “I go crazy if I stay inside too long. I'll do it when I take Romper out for a walk.”
She turned.
“Maybe you can take him out to the lawn before you leave for work, though. If you can squeeze it in.”
“Absolutely.”
Lincoln finished his pancakes quickly, not wanting to see her perch on the counter again to eat. He left the kitchen when she came with her plate and retreated to his room.
He sat on the edge of his bed, the bedroom door cracked, and listened as Kali peppered the boy with questions he clearly wasn't going to answer. He listened to the sound of her opening the apartment door—Romper's happy little bark. Listened to Romper and her re-entering the apartment, of her directing Theo to get his bag and not wear those shoes, and then of the door closing, and silence re-entering his life.
Romper nudged the bedroom door open farther and cocked his head. He seemed perplexed by the fact that the door wasn't wide open. This would be one of many changes. When you lived alone, doors didn't close.
Lincoln shuffled down the hall and into the living room cautiously. The boxes. The furniture. They sucked up all the space.
He stood at the work table, determined to start on a new model. He looked at the door. He worked. He stood by the window, eating a tuna fish sandwich. He glanced at the door. He stretched out on the couch and read till he finished his book. He turned to the door. He walked from the living room to the bathroom and back to the living room to retrieve a book to read in the tub—his back needed the soak. Standing in a towel, he looked again to the door.
Would it open? It could, at any moment. She said eight. But what if she'd forgotten something? What if the boy was sick and she had to leave work early? Kids got sick all the time.
Would she knock? He'd left the door unlocked. Should he have?
Once out of the bath, Lincoln turned the lock. That was better. He'd have warning—today, at least. Why had he offered a key? Without one, he had some power over his own privacy. But he had offered. After a few hours more of distracted work, glad to be free of the boxes and furniture and lack of space, Lincoln, with Romper beside him, walked toward the library with the intention of finding a key cutter next.
Lincoln immersed himself into research, coming up with a way to safely heat the tree house in winter, and finding a device out of Switzerland that was supposed to be superior at storing solar energy. The key cutter wasn't far and so, with still two hours until Kali and Theo were supposed to return, Lincoln took Romper to the Commons. His back hurt too much to throw the ball, but Romper ran anyway, bounding ahead of Lincoln and then speeding back, his tail and tongue wagging. When Lincoln couldn't stand anymore, he settled on the grass and stared at the sky, with Romper beside him. He rubbed the dog's head then closed his eyes. When he woke, he waved down two runners to ask the time and arrived home fifteen minutes before Kali said she'd arrive.
Though unlocked, Kali knocked on the door. When Lincoln called out to enter, she ushered Theo in. She stood just past the entry and stared at the room. She didn't even acknowledge Lincoln. Her gaze passed over him as if he were another piece of furniture, another box not where it should be.
She removed Theo's backpack and stepped further into the room. “How was your day?”
“Good. Yours?”
Her chin, though set, quivered. She shrugged, “Fine,” and helped Theo get his sneakers off. One of the laces was sticking. Shouldn't a three-year-old, even if he was almost four, have Velcro?
Lincoln hesitated. And why the quiver, why the shrug? Leave it. Let it go. Just—“Really?”
“Huh?” She looked up. So tired. But it was more than that.
“Your day. I mean,” he leaned forward, “are you okay?”
Kali stared at him a moment. She put a hand on Theo's shoulder. “Why don't you go change into your PJ's. You can have your bath tomorrow.” Theo looked at his mother, his head cocked almost the way Romper's did, then walked away. Kali looked back at Lincoln. “I lost three patients today.”
“Lost?”
“They died.” She made her way across the room. “It's the ER. So it happens. But ...” That quiver again. “It's always so sudden. A shock. To have someone living, breathing, and then not.” She trailed a hand along the work table, picked up his latest model, then set it down gently. “Today two MVAs and a boy who fell from a tree. He was only seven. You fight to make it better, you know? To fix them. But sometimes you can't make it better.”
Lincoln swallowed, thankful for his sore back and twisted ankle—for only having a sore back and twisted ankle. “At least it's not you who lost them. I mean, it's the doctor's responsibility, right?” Stupid. Was that the right thing to say? Did that matter? “But even then. It's just, hard, I imagine. But life, right? And you save some?”
Kali stepped back from the table, her gaze sweeping the room once more. “Yeah. It's just life.” At the entrance to the kitchen, she stopped. “It can be even worse being a nurse. You stand there, wishing you could do more. And there's a lot you can do. A lot I can do. But you're right. I'm not the one to call it. I'm the one to hold their hand as they lay terrified, not understanding why life is leaving, not able to tell their loved ones they love them or they're sorry or they forgive.” Kali swallowed. She bit her lip. “Sometimes they tell me—ask me to pass the message on—if they have time, if they're that lucky, if, through the pain, they're even able to think those thoughts.” She shrugged and slipped out of his sight.
Lincoln claimed he wasn't hungry when Kali offered dinner, saying he'd eat later. He would. And tomorrow he'd use some of the wood he had to make a chair. He didn't want her to feel she was in his way and didn't want to be in hers. While she put Theo to bed, Lincoln sat on the couch with a book on caulking natural tree limbs rather than using two-by-fours to build walls sitting on his lap. It seemed risky, relying on the unevenness of a natural limb or trunk against strong and bitter Nova Scotian winds. Perhaps a double layer. A base of practicality, an outside of beauty ... or the other way around, so he could enjoy the beauty while inside during those winter months.
Kali tiptoed into the living room and stood before him. Still tired. Still looking like she carried the weight of each death on her shoulders.
“Mind if I shower?”
Lincoln shook his head.
She came out, hair wrapped in a towel, just how Lucy used to wrap hers. Lincoln's throat clenched.
“Mind if I set up my TV?”
Lincoln raised his brows. “I don't have cable.”
She pressed her lips. “Of course. Why would you? You don't have a television.”
“Afraid not.”
“And no internet?”
Lincoln shook his head.
“Maybe one of your neighbours hasn't locked their Wi-Fi.”
She set up a small projection TV and connected her laptop to it. Lincoln hadn't seen a TV like that in years. In Montreal, a fifty-two-inch flat screen had sat in his and Lucy's living room. A forty in their bedroom. Not that they'd used either a lot ... or at least Lincoln hadn't. He was too busy trying to keep at the top of a world that always seemed to rise out of reach.
The Wi-Fi must have worked because the image on the screen came to life. Voices filled the room. Something about it made him angry, made him want to yell at her, tell her to turn it off, get it out, get out herself.
He left the room.