Chapter 10: Laundry Cart

I did not answer my mother's question.

I looked at the white roses on the blanket and then at her hand.

"Give me until morning," I said.

"Of course, darling."

She stood and kissed my forehead.

"Take all the time you need. Friday is a long way off."

She picked up her handbag and left the roses where they lay.

I waited until her heels had gone down the hall.

Then I picked up the roses and dropped them in the wastebasket, thorns first.

The dialysis tech came on at nine.

He was in his thirties, with a shaved head and tired eyes, and he wheeled his machine in without a word.

He hooked me up, checked the line twice and sat on the rolling stool.

"I watched your video," he said, very quietly. "My sister was gone for two years once."

I looked at him.

"Did she come home?"

"She did." He stared at the machine. "Nobody believed her for a month. Everybody had a reason it couldn't be as bad as she said."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Nothing. I'm only telling you what I saw on my shift."

He held up a phone.

"That's the nurse's station phone. I forgot to put it back."

I did not say thank you.

I said the number instead, the one I had read twice across a visiting table.

He dialed it and handed me the phone.

It rang once.

"Fiske."

"It's Willa."

I heard a chair scrape.

"Where are you?"

"The sixth floor. Dialysis. There's an officer outside my door, and a hold that runs fourteen days."

"Willa, listen to me. If you walk out of a hold, it's a violation. I can't take you in as a witness, not without a judge's signature."

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