“You’re bleeding,” Emily said, pointing to his hand, and with mild surprise he discovered she was right. He’d been working on the outboard and come inside for a glass of lemonade. Somehow, replacing the fuel filter, he’d managed to split open a knuckle and smear blood on his pants. She had him hold still, like a child, and dabbed at the spots with cold water.
“You should put something on it so it doesn’t get infected. If it isn’t already.”
His hands were dirty, the whorls of his fingers filled with grease. He used the sink in the bathroom, where they kept a rusty tin of Band-Aids. The soap and hot water stung.
If she hadn’t told him, he wouldn’t have known. He hadn’t felt it at all, but his hands were calloused. He was used to nicks and scratches from working around the house. He thought of his father. At the end, his skin was thin as paper. He accidentally scratched off scabs, blotting the beads of blood with wadded Kleenex Henry found all over his condo.
“Do you need help putting it on?” she called.
“No,” he said, as if she were being absurd, and then struggled to apply it one-handed, one wing limply folding over, sticking to itself. He swore and tore open another, the counter littered with trash. A hundred years of packaging and they couldn’t come up with anything better.
The next night, as he was getting ready for bed, Emily stopped him, lifting his pajama top and turning down his waistband to inspect his hip. “Where did you get this bruise?”
He had to think. “Maybe getting in and out of the cart the other day.”
“It looks bad. Does it hurt?”
“Not if you don’t poke at it like that.”
Later that week, looping around the foot of the bed to raise the blinds, he banged his shin on the metal frame and had to lean against the wall to stay upright. “Jiminy Christmas.” At first he worried that his leg was broken, but there was just a lump, at the livid center a white shred of skin he pinched off. He limped into the kitchen, where Emily was making him some eggs.
“What is going on with you? You’re falling apart.”
“I am,” he said, shaking his head as if it were a joke.