This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Photograph

The tent flap lifted behind me.

"Bess said you'd be hunting for the kettle."

Padraig stood in the opening with the night air at his back.

His eyes went to my hands, and to the frame in them.

Neither of us said anything.

I set the photograph back on the pillow, face up, exactly as I had found it.

"Your brother," I said.

He did not move.

"June ninth, six years ago. A motorcycle on the Ross Island Bridge ramp. He was twenty-six."

"You remember the date."

"I remember every one I lose."

"Do you."

He came in and let the flap fall, and the tent was suddenly very small.

"Is that why you asked for me?" I said. "Because I was his surgeon?"

"Yes."

He said it plainly.

My stomach turned over, and I held onto the crate with one hand.

"I read the chart a hundred times," Padraig said. "Arrival, intubation, the first incision. Your handwriting is neat. Your notes are clear. I wanted to meet the person behind it."

"To see whether I was slow."

"To see who you were."

"I was there the second he came through the door." My voice was not steady. "I took him straight up. I did everything I knew how to do for three hours."

"I know."

"Then what do you want from me?"

"I don't know yet."

He said that flatly too, and it was the most honest thing anyone had said to me in a month.

"I'll leave," I said. "I'll take the morning truck. You don't have to look at me."

"No."

"Dr. Lowry..."

"You're not leaving." He stepped closer. "You saved a girl's leg today that I would have taken. You're the best pair of hands I have. I'm not sending you back down the mountain over a dead brother."

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