I had to use both hands to lift the skillet back onto the range. It left a grey smudge of grease on the clean white surface, a tiny stain exactly two inches wide.
“The pain is getting worse every single day,” I said, laying the folder near his elbow. “I checked the insurance coverage again this morning. They still consider the reduction elective unless we get a specialist referral.”
Gerald sighed, a long, whistling breath through his nose, and placed his red pen neatly in the crease of his notebook.
“We need to watch our budget before making any big decisions, Lyla,” he said. “The roof on the garage is going to need three thousand dollars of work by spring.”
He went back to his grading, and I stood there holding the edge of the table, counting the seconds until the heat in my neck faded to a dull ache.
By eight o clock that evening, the pain had settled into a heavy, throbbing pressure at the base of my skull. I sat at the dining room table with our blue heating pad plugged into the outlet near the baseboard, the high setting pressing hot against my neck.
The blue fabric of the pad was faded at the corners, smelling slightly of singed cotton whenever I left it on for more than twenty minutes. It had three temperature settings, but even the highest could not reach the deep, cold ache in my spine.
The dining room clock ticked, sixty beats a minute, marking the time I was losing to the pain.
Spread out before me was our joint savings account statement, showing a balance of exactly twelve thousand four hundred and twelve dollars.
Gerald sat opposite me, his face illuminated by the blue glow of his phone screen. His right index finger was tapping the glass, a fast, rhythmic ticking that always made my neck tighten further.
