Nine years in an emergency room and I can read a man in ninety seconds.
This one is the size of a door and won’t sit down. Won’t answer a question. Keeps both hands flat where I can see them the entire time I’m stitching his knuckles — like he’s proving something to me I never asked him to prove.
Then I pull into a gravel lot and watch him go somewhere no one can follow.
And I watch him come back, because I said his name.
He fixes my door. My tap. My mother’s car. He is very obviously not there about the door, and I let him not be there about it for a month.
But there’s something he remembers. Something a thousand years old with six people in it.
He’s going to tell me on a river, in the rain, with no way out.
Will I still be able to look at him?
