Chapter 23: Adjourned

Noah's medical bag lived in the trunk of his car, and he went out to get it with his jaw set.

Raven sat on the edge of the guest bathtub, still grey, holding a damp towel to his neck.

It was the guest room where Noah had slept his first night in this house.

Noah came back with the bag and shut the door.

"Sit up straight," he said. "Arm out."

"Is this an exam?"

"It's an exam. I'm not your husband for ten minutes."

Raven held out his arm and watched Noah's hands.

They were steady, the way they always were when it mattered.

Noah took blood, ran a strip, waited, and read it twice.

Then he did the same for himself, with his own sleeve pushed up and his jaw set.

For a long moment he stood very still at the sink.

"Noah."

"Don't talk," said Noah. "I'm reading."

"What does it say?"

Noah turned around, and he was smiling and crying together.

"I need to tell everybody at once," he said. "I need them all at the table. Give me five minutes to stop shaking."

Five minutes later, the Grandwell family sat in the dining room around the cooling soup.

Gracy was twisting her napkin into a rope.

Benjamin sat very straight with a notepad and a pen.

Thompson sat at the foot of the table, because Gracy had invited him for Sunday dinner two years ago and nobody had ever told him to stop.

Noah stood at the head of the table with the clinic's intake form in one hand.

"I have two results to report," he said. "I'm going to read them in order."

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