Chester barks when Nor arrives, the joyful bark he does for her and no one else. That’s the only sound that cuts through the white noise blasting in my ears.
I stay in my room, even when I hear Jess and Nor laughing together, smell chicken soup and home-baked bread.
When Nor comes to my door—hours later, I think, but time passes strangely when writing a battle, the moments between a lifted blade and the strike that ends a life interminable and also over before you’ve had a chance to consider what it means to kill—I pretend I’m asleep.
She comes in anyway, sits on the edge of my bed, strokes my hair.
“Sometimes,” she whispers, “sometimes it feels like this gaping wound is never going to heal. If we cover it up, it never gets sunlight. If we leave it uncovered, it gets infected. The body has all these amazing ways to heal itself. But what happens when that’s not enough?”
She stays for a long time. I think she cries.