Chapter 21: The Doctor's Word

The decree came in the mail on Thursday morning, a single stamped page with a clerk's signature.

I read it standing at the kitchen counter.

Hoyt Pelham and Audrey Merrick were no longer married.

I waited to feel something large, and what I felt was hungry.

I ate toast over the sink.

My appointment was at eleven, and this time I told Cavan where it was.

"Do you want me to come in?" he asked on the phone.

"No."

"Do you want me to drive you?"

"No. But I'd like you to be somewhere."

"Where?"

"Anywhere I can see your truck when I come out."

He didn't say anything for a moment.

"I'll be in the lot," he said.

The clinic waiting room was the same plastic chairs and the same poster about folic acid.

Nobody sat beside me this time.

I held my own purse on my lap and read a pamphlet about sleep without taking in a word.

"Ms. Merrick?"

The doctor was the one who had said, weeks ago, that I could grieve in any way that worked for me.

She shut the door and sat on the stool across from me, and she did not look at the chart first.

"How are you sleeping?"

"Badly."

"Eating?"

"Some."

"Bleeding?"

"It stopped nine days ago."

She nodded and wrote something.

"Then I'll tell you what I came to tell you," she said. "Your body has healed. You're clear to go back to everything. Work, exercise, travel."

I let that sit.

"And everything else?" I said.

"Everything else, yes."

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