Chapter 10: Discharge Day

My mother came home on Friday morning.

She wore her good green cardigan and a pair of sunglasses, because she said she was not going to be seen leaving a hospital looking like a hospital.

Tobias had asked if he could carry the boxes.

I had said yes, and I was already regretting how much I did not mind.

"Is this the man," my mother said, eyeing him from the wheelchair, "who left a card at the desk?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Tobias.

"Good handwriting."

"Thank you."

"Hands," my mother said. "Show me your hands."

He put down the box and held them out.

She turned them over with her good hand and looked at the palms.

"You carry things," she told me, approvingly. "He's got the right hands. The other one only ever carried a camera."

"Mom."

"I'm only saying."

Tobias was trying very hard not to smile.

The sliding doors of the rehab wing opened onto a cold, bright morning.

There had been a frost overnight, and the front steps shone with it.

I pushed the chair down the ramp, with Tobias behind me carrying the last two boxes.

Halfway down, my heel slid.

His hand caught my back, flat and hard, between my shoulder blades.

I stopped.

For a moment neither of us moved.

I could feel the warmth of his palm through my coat.

"Careful," he said, quite low.

"I'm careful."

"I know."

He did not take his hand away right away, and I did not tell him to.

I told myself it was the ice.

Then I looked up.

At the bottom of the ramp, in the middle of the pick-up lane, stood Conor.

He was in a dark suit, clean-shaven, holding a bouquet of white roses.

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