Chapter 4: Water

Dean woke up at 7:12 on Sunday morning and asked for water.

I knew the time because I'd been sleeping in the recliner by his window since Saturday night, with my coat over my knees and the form in the pocket.

I heard the rasp first.

"Water."

The nurse was already there with a pink sponge on a stick.

She touched it to his lips, and he sucked at it.

I stood up and looked at his chart over her shoulder, because I'm nosy and he was mine until Monday.

Then his eyes found me.

They were bloodshot and slow and the same brown I had picked out of a crowd at twenty-five.

"Claire," he said.

Just that.

In the doorway behind me, somebody stopped breathing.

Mandy had been outside the room since four.

I'd said she could wait there, and she had, in her camel coat, on a plastic chair that was bolted to the wall.

I had told her I'd let her in the minute he asked.

I turned around.

"Do you want Mandy in here?" I asked him.

Dean squinted at me.

He was on a lot of medication.

"Where's Claire?" he said.

"I'm Claire."

"Okay," he said, relieved, and closed his eyes again.

The chair outside scraped.

I didn't look.

I heard Mandy's heels go down the hallway, fast and even, and I heard the elevator ding and take her away.

Patty, in the other chair, was staring at the ceiling.

"He's confused," she said. "It's the morphine."

"Probably," I said.

It was the best I had.

I ate a granola bar from my purse and drank the coffee I'd made the nurse bring me and did not feel like I'd won anything.

At 8:40 the elevator dinged again.