“He has been doing a lot of scrambling lately,” Aaron said.
His thumb spun the gold band around his finger, twice, before he let his hand drop to his side. He looked back toward the window, where the low clouds of late September clung to the glass.
“He wanted to make sure they had their sweaters,” I said, closing my eyes for a moment. “The mornings have been cold.”
“He knew about the sweaters because he was at our house on Tuesday,” Aaron said.
“He was dropping off the lawnmower part,” I said.
“He was there for forty minutes, Elena,” Aaron said.
“I was folding laundry,” I said. “He sat on the porch and drank a glass of water. That was all.”
Aaron checked his watch again, the metal ticking invisible but present in the silence.
“I will go down to the cafeteria,” he said. “The doctor said they would check you again at noon.”
He left the door open an inch, and the low murmur of the hallway drifted in, carrying the smell of boiled cabbage and floor wax.
The room remained quiet for the next hour, save for the hum of the heating vent in the corner. I watched the light shift on the ceiling, the pale squares of sun moving slowly toward the closet door.
My sister Diana came in twenty minutes after the noon whistle blew at the lumber yard down the road. She was forty-one, with her dark hair pulled back into a tight clip that made her eyes look wider than they were. She carried a brown paper bag that smelled of toasted rye bread and mustard.
She crossed her arms tightly over her chest as she stood near the foot of my bed, her eyes scanning the IV pole and the plastic water pitcher.
“You look gray, Elena,” she said, her voice carrying its usual sharp, declarative edge. “Have you eaten anything today?”
“Aaron went to get coffee,” I said.
Diana set the bag on my bedside table and pulled out a turkey sandwich wrapped in wax paper.
“He has been gone over an hour,” she said. “I saw him near the elevators, staring at the floor indicator.”
