They wheeled me into Bay Three and drew a thick blue curtain, shutting out the sound of a distant telephone.
Dr. Helen Morris walked in three minutes later, carrying a metal chart under her arm.
She was a tall woman of fifty-two with graying hair pulled back into a sharp clip, and she adjusted her silver-framed reading glasses as she approached the gurney.
“I am Dr. Morris,” she said, her voice carrying a measured, clinical authority.
She looked at Daniel, who was already pulling a plastic chair closer to my side.
“Mr. Vance, I will need you to step out to the reception desk and complete the insurance registration forms before we begin the examination,” Dr. Morris said.
“I can do that later,” Daniel said, his smile tight. “I prefer to stay with my wife while you look her over.”
“The hospital policy requires the billing paperwork to be initiated before we run any imaging,” Dr. Morris said, her tone flat and unyielding.
Daniel stood up, his gold watch catching the overhead light as he adjusted his cuffs.
“I will be right outside the curtain, Elena,” he said, his voice dropping into that quiet, cold delivery that always made my spine stiffen.
Once the blue curtain settled back into place, Dr. Morris turned her attention to me.
She did not ask me to speak right away; instead, she reached down and gently touched the dust on my knees.
The gray powder came off on her blue sterile gloves, leaving a dark smudge on the latex.
“You have quite a bit of outdoor dirt on your clothes, Elena,” Dr. Morris said.
I looked at the silver beaded bracelet on my left wrist, the one Madison had made for me, and said nothing.
My mind slipped back to yesterday afternoon, when the sun was still high and the air was thick with the scent of dry grass.
I had been standing near the chain-link fence at the edge of our property, watching Madison and Chloe play with a red plastic bucket.
Our neighbor, Mr. Henderson, was standing on a stepladder in his driveway, working on a small black device mounted under his eaves.
He was an eighty-year-old retired machinist who spent his days tinkering with old lawnmowers and watching the street.
“Put in a new high-definition security camera,” Mr. Henderson had called out, wiping his greasy hands on a yellow rag.
“Covers my entire driveway and aims right across your side patio,” he said, pointing to the small glass lens.
