Chapter 7: One Step Down

Siri had sent the file at noon, with no message.

It was an audio clip from episode 400, four minutes long.

I played it for Roan on the dock at three in the morning, with my phone between us on the step.

I told him Siri said it was about a man in the ambulance bay.

I did not tell him I had a good idea who.

Kasper's voice came out of the speaker, soft and warm.

"I want to read you another page from the notebook I keep by the bed," he said. "Please keep this one to yourselves."

A piano began.

"There's a man I sit next to at night," Kasper read.

"He never asks me to be better."

"He sits one step down from me, and we say nothing for twenty minutes."

I stared at the concrete.

"He has never touched me, and I feel him everywhere. I know exactly how far his knee is from mine."

Roan did not breathe.

"I think he's the only person in my life who doesn't need me to say I'm fine."

Kasper paused for the piano.

"A friend told me this is called loneliness, but I don't think so. I think it's something I haven't been allowed to name."

The clip ended.

The dock was very quiet.

A truck went by on the road below, and its lights crossed the brick wall and the oxygen cage and Roan's face.

"I wrote that eight months ago," I said. "I didn't write it for anyone to read."

I made myself look at him.

"That's you. Roan. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, it's embarrassing. You don't have to say anything."

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