Half an hour after Marcus kept down the peanut butter sandwich, Lee administered his first dose of Amoxicillin and Motrin. Half an hour after that, the back door creaked open. Marcus shifted against the pillow, eyes darting to the doorway.
“It’s Violet,” Lee said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
In the kitchen, Violet was stuffing cans of health-brand soup into a cupboard. A stiff-handled brown paper bag squatted at the end of the counter. One of the seams was half torn away from the handle. Clothes peeked out the top.
Violet looked over her shoulder. “I figured I should buy all the soup I could carry, in case we have to hide here for weeks or something. Or we can take them with us, if we actually leave Michigan.”
“Sam is adamant.”
“What about you?”
Lee shook her head. Over the last hour, the possibility had become less outlandish, but it meant the end of her clinic, her job at the hospital, her ties to … To whom? Sam? Chuck and Belinda? If Marcus needed Texas, Lee would go to Texas. As soon as he was well enough to travel.
“Just so you know.” Violet rubbed her thumb against her wrist. “If you blurted that out and then wondered why you said it, or … Anyway, I wouldn’t hold you to it. Bringing me, I mean.”
“If the situation forces fleeing and you wish to come, then you’re welcome to.”
It was nothing more than a practical invitation. Where would Violet go if not with Lee? To dissuade a gush of the girl’s gratitude, Lee dug through the bag of clothes. A week’s worth of boxer briefs and socks, a package of white T-shirts. One pair of black fatigue pants, two pairs of flannel sleep pants, and three pairs of jeans. Four long-sleeved men’s shirts, unadorned except for the buttons on the Henley. Several flannel button-downs and a zip hoodie, all of which could be put on without exacerbating broken ribs.
Lee might have believed Belinda stuffed this bag for an unknown patient sized large, if the clothes hadn’t all been so … Marcus. Even the colors of the shirts—she’d chosen black, brown, dark greens, blues, one in mustard yellow, one in brick red. No white, no pastels, no patterns.
Violet stood beside the refrigerator, watching her, rubbing her wrist with her thumb.
“You told her,” Lee said.
“You knew I was going to.”
“You said ‘only if it comes up.’”
“Right. It came up.”
“When you brought it up.” Exhaustion nearly buckled Lee’s legs. She leaned her shoulders against the wall. “Is she waiting in the car?”
Violet rolled her eyes. “Good grief, no. I said they can come tomorrow, not before noon.”
“Do they understand that he’s …?”
“I told them he’s hurt, and it’s bad, and he’s sick with pneumonia. And you’re taking care of him and he’s going to be okay.”
Lee pushed away from the wall.
“Lee, I get that you don’t want to deal with Belinda. Really, I do. But for us to let them keep grieving, even for a day, when we know. I mean, think how it was when they found out he was … I’m sorry, but I had to tell them.”
The kindness held a certain logic, and what was done was done. Lee had fifteen hours to prepare for Belinda’s barging in the door and dragging Marcus clear off the bed for a hug and crying all over him. Queasiness settled in her stomach. She returned to the bedroom.
“Marcus.” Lee waited for him to meet her eyes. “We have clean clothes. You can shower, whenever you’re ready.”
He absorbed that as if it were a new thought, glanced down at his filthy cargo shorts and bare chest, and nodded.
“You can rest for now, if—”
“No.”
Getting him up proved more difficult than she expected. Any way she supported him put pressure on his ribs, and he had almost no muscle strength in his extremities. When he finally made it to his feet, his right leg buckled. Had Lee not already been supporting most of his weight, he’d have collapsed to the floor.
“Your leg is injured?” she said when he tried to continue without comment.
He gritted his teeth and shuffled forward.
“Marcus, I can’t treat it if I don’t—”
“Knee.”
“How did it happen?”
“Not bad now. Stiff.”
The shower was only a stall, not a bathtub, so Lee set up the metal folding chair she sat on to debride Ray Donnelly’s ulcers. Marcus was silent as she lathered his hair, shoulders, and back with the cheap body soap on hand. Then he took over cleaning himself and rinsing off with the extending shower head. Lee set out underwear, the brown zip hoodie, and a green pair of sleep pants. By the time she’d helped him dress and struggle to his feet, all his muscles shook with fatigue. Lee recruited Violet to support his less injured side and positioned herself where she would least jostle the broken ribs. They reached the bedroom after long minutes, and he slumped down on the mattress. His breathing labored more than when he used to run the park path for miles.
The thought bridged the distance Lee had maintained for the last two hours between her nursing tasks and herself, as if she could be a nurse yet not be Lee. As if Marcus were a stranger brought in by ambulance and charted as John Doe. She’d massaged soap into his scalp and pretended no cowlick twirled at the base of his neck. She’d washed months of dirt and neglect from his malnourished frame and pretended not to remember the muscular power in his arms and shoulders. She’d helped him into secondhand clothes and pretended she didn’t know his favorite pair of jeans, threadbare and faded and loosely fitted.
She checked his knee once he was back in bed and found no swelling or heat, but his range of motion was limited. Flexion seemed to cause less pain than extension, but his jaw clamped hard when she asked.
This silence inside him—it wasn’t theirs. It didn’t hold safety or trust. She needed to understand it, but instead she kept blundering against it and stumbling away, cut by its edges. She had to index the questions he didn’t want asked and observe their answers for herself.
So she didn’t mention the new scars she’d observed while helping him dress—nearly a dozen of them, dime-sized puckers of skin. On his back, one near the old scar where he’d removed the Constabulary tracker. On his abdomen. On his chest, one below the right clavicle. These compared to no scar she’d seen before.
In minutes, he crashed to a deep sleep.
Violet appeared in the doorway, cradling a steaming bowl of chicken and rice soup. “Oh … I thought I’d see if he wanted to eat some more.”
“Let him rest.”
“Right. Guess I should’ve asked.”
“No, Violet, it’s fine.” A thoughtful, sensible thing to do, in fact. One reason Violet was suited to work with patients.
“Lee, are you … well, um …?”
The knock on the back door jolted Lee’s heartbeat.
Violet jumped. “Is it Sam?”
Bringing an emergency patient without texting first? He knew Lee was here, but he’d still follow procedure. He was Sam, after all. “I’m not sure. Wait here.”
Across the house, the doorknob jiggled, and then a key slid into the lock. Beneath the white blanket, Marcus’s legs moved. He opened his eyes, and one knee bent to push himself up.
“It’s all right,” Lee said. “Only Sam has a key.”
“Stay with him,” Violet said. “I’ll find out what’s up.”
She slipped from the room before Lee could protest. The back door opened, and Marcus clasped the blanket. Despite the flush of fever on his skin, he was one breath away from struggling to his feet, or trying to. Lee shook her head, and challenge stirred in his eyes. If someone unwanted breached that door, he wouldn’t simply lie here. She dipped her head once in comprehension.
We can still speak without words.
Violet’s voice punctured the quiet in the house. “He doesn’t come in here.”
Sam’s deep voice spoke quietly for a few seconds, until Violet cut him off.
“No freaking way, Sam.”