was off.
Once, he slipped cash into my coat, and I returned it to his desk with a note saying I wanted partnership, not rescue.
He never did it again.
Instead, he asked which groceries I liked, whether I missed my old neighborhood, and whether the quiet inside his house scared me.
Sometimes it did.
Sometimes I missed the cracked window and noisy pipes because they had belonged to me.
Then the diagnosis arrived in November.
Six weeks.
That was all we were given.
The hospital hallway smelled of antiseptic
