The fluorescent lights of the admission lobby flickered with a low, white intensity that made my eyes water.
Daniel kept his hand locked around my forearm, guiding me toward the high counter where a triage nurse sat behind a pane of thick glass.
His grip was firm enough to keep me upright, but his fingers pressed directly into the bruise forming near my elbow.
The nurse looked up from her computer screen, her eyes moving from my face down to my bare feet, which were gray with patio dirt.
“My wife had a terrible fall on our stairs this morning,” Daniel said, his voice dropping into the warm, reassuring register he used when he was closing a deal on a model home.
“She tripped near the top landing and went all the way down,” he said, tapping the face of his gold watch with his index finger.
I kept my eyes fixed on the gray laminate of the counter, my fingers finding my wedding band and rolling it slowly around my ring finger.
The nurse, a middle-aged woman with a silver name tag that read Martha, pulled a plastic clipboard toward her.
“Did she lose consciousness at any point?” Martha asked, her pen ready.
“Only for a second or two,” Daniel said, not giving me a chance to draw breath.
“She was a bit disoriented when I found her at the bottom of the steps, but she is starting to clear up now,” he said.
Martha did not look at him when she spoke next.
“Is that how it happened, hon?” she asked me.
My throat felt dry, coated in the fine grit of the backyard dust I had inhaled while lying on the concrete.
“I fell,” I said, the words dry and quiet in my mouth.
Daniel squeezed my arm a fraction tighter, his thumb pressing into the muscle.
“We just want to make sure she did not break anything,” he said.
Martha looked at the smudges on my pajama pants, her eyes lingering on the dark patches of dirt at my knees.
“We will get her back to a bay right away,” Martha said, pressing a button on her desk.
An orderly with a wheelchair appeared from behind a set of double doors a minute later.
Daniel helped me into the chair, his touch suddenly gentle and attentive, a performance for the orderly who was watching us.
We moved down a wide hallway where the air smelled of bleach and cold grease from an early morning food cart.
