Chapter 5: That Is All This Is

By six that evening Lottie was out of the second operation, asleep, with a tube taped to her hand.

They let me stand at her bed for ten minutes.

She looked small under the white blanket, and her curls were damp.

I put Biscuit on the pillow next to her cheek, and the nurse said it would have to be washed first.

I told her it could wait.

Then I went looking for air, and the only door that opened onto any was the one marked Staff Roof.

Terrence was already out there.

He sat on a low wall at the far end with his scrub cap in his hand.

The city lay spread out behind him.

I almost went back inside.

"You can stay," he said, without turning around.

I sat down on the wall, with a long space between us.

For a while neither of us talked.

"She did well," he said. "Better than I hoped."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. Burns turn on you. Infection comes on day two or three, and then it's a fight."

"Then I'll fight it."

"I know you will."

It was the first thing he had said to me in four years that was not about a patient.

I looked at my hands.

"Sawyer told the firehouse the boy was his son," I said.

I watched him, and he did not look surprised.

"I know," he said.

"You knew?"

"For three years."

He said it quietly, and he kept his eyes on the skyline.

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