Chapter 4: Bare Hand

On Thursday at four, I told the receptionist on forty-seven my name, and she didn't ask why.

The glass door to his office was already open.

Quincy Delamere stood at the window with his back to me.

"Your husband's leave request is on my desk," he said. "I haven't signed it."

"Colin thinks I'm at the nurse's office."

"Good." He turned around. "Close the door."

He wore the charcoal suit again, and one pair of gloves now, not two.

I noticed that. I think he saw me notice.

"I washed my hands once today," he said. "It's a record."

"Is that a joke?"

"It's a fact. I'm told they're easy to confuse."

I laughed. It surprised me, and it surprised him too, because the corner of his mouth moved.

In the exam room, he told me to sit on the table and rolled up my left sleeve to the elbow.

"I'm drawing blood," he said.

"Then I'll map where it burns. Say a number from one to ten as I go."

"What's the blood for?"

"A hunch. I'd rather have numbers."

He tied the band around my arm and tapped the inside of my elbow.

The needle went in so smoothly I hardly felt it.

I watched the tube fill dark red.

"You've done this a lot," I said.

"Eleven years of emergency rooms. I could do it in a moving car."

He pressed gauze to the spot, taped it, and rested his fingers on top.

Then he drew back and took off the right glove.

I had been waiting for that, and my body knew it.

Everything in me went tight and bright.

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