Chapter 20: Without an Audience

I stood across the street from the hospital at six in the morning on the last day of the year.

It was a public bench at a bus stop, with a plastic shelter and a trash can, and the sidewalk belonged to the city.

I had checked that twice.

Her second term said I never came to her work, and I was not at her work.

I was at a bus stop, and I had not told her I was coming.

Nobody else was on the street.

The sky over the parking garage was grey, and my breath hung in front of me.

At five past seven the staff door opened and the night shift came out in ones and twos with their coats half buttoned.

Clara was last.

She had her white coat folded over her arm and a cardboard box under it.

She stopped at the curb.

She looked across the empty street and saw me, and for a moment neither of us moved.

Then she looked both ways and crossed.

She stopped in front of the bench.

"Is that Rory's idea of helping?" she said.

"He told me when your shift ended. I didn't ask him to."

"You're across the road from my work."

"I'm at a bus stop."

Something in her face almost gave.

She put the box on the bench and sat beside it, a careful foot away from me.

"Say it," she said. "You have until midnight."

I had spent four days writing it.

I had thrown away every draft, because each one had a place in it where I came out looking better.

I turned to face her.

"Three years ago I stood at the top of the stairs and watched you cry," I said. "I could have gone down. I told myself you wanted to be alone."

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