The doctor looked at my bare feet, then at the clean pressed collar of my husband’s shirt, her pen hovering over the chart.
Daniel shifted his weight, his leather shoes squeaking on the white linoleum of ER Bay Three. He gave a soft, dry laugh that sounded like paper rubbing together in a desk drawer.
“She has always been a bit of a daydreamer, Doctor,” he said, his voice carrying that light, easy tone he used when explaining a delayed building permit to a client. He reached out and tapped the metal rail of my gurney. “Just last week she nearly tripped over her own shadow in the hallway. I tell her she needs to look where she is going, but her mind is always somewhere else.”
Dr. Helen Morris did not laugh. She kept her eyes on her clipboard, her silver-framed reading glasses sitting low on the bridge of her nose, her pen poised over my medical chart.
“The dirt on her knees is dark patio dust, Mr. Vance,” the doctor said, her voice measured and clinical. “And the tear in her pajama pants is clean, like it caught on metal. Indoor carpeted stairs do not usually leave outdoor dirt on a patient’s knees.”
“Well, she was outside earlier,” Daniel said quickly, his smile remaining perfectly in place. “Checking the pool pump, probably. She forgets that the concrete out there gets slick when the morning dew hits it. She is just clumsy, Doctor. It is a family trait, I think. I always tell her she needs to be more careful, but she just laughs it off.”
I rolled my wedding band around my ring finger, keeping my eyes fixed on the blue cotton of my hospital gown. The metal of the ring felt unusually hot against my skin. I could feel the heat of Daniel’s gaze on the side of my face, waiting for me to speak, waiting for me to play my part. The hum of the pool pump from earlier that morning seemed to echo in the quiet of the emergency room.
“Is that how it happened, Elena?” Dr. Morris asked.
She was not looking at Daniel now. She was looking straight at me, her pen hovering over the chart.
“I lost my balance,” I whispered.
“On the stairs?” Dr. Morris asked.
“Yes,” I said.
The lie hung in the space between us, thin and fragile.
