The night is stuck on 3 a.m.
The parquet floor whines beneath his heavy steps. A bedroom door opens slowly. A sigh lingers on the periphery. At one end of the apartment, the whir and click of the machine pulses nutrients. He tiptoes the best he can, and exhaustion and age give him the grace of a barge. Steady into the night.
Standing at the base of the bed, he stares at the figure in the wan halogen light. Her jaundiced skin fades into the darkness, but her arm remains tethered to the IV pole - her anchor to the world.
His breath slows to matching her rhythm. In, 1, 2, 3, out, 1, 2, 3. Again.
Before he turns away, she is wrenched away from sleep. Rising bile with deep bone pain. He sits beside her, rubs her back, reads the braille of her spine. The pink gown, given as a present some weeks earlier, is worn thin from the hours of massage. Skin and bone. The fingers feel only skin and bone.
"Where is the pain? In the shoulders? Stomach?"
"Shoulders."
"Okay. Do you want some Dilaudid?"
"..."
"Okay."
She stifles groans, he kneads shoulders, a car alarm cries.
The narcotic submerges her. Back to sleep, away from tonite. What are we gonna do, he asks. What are we gonna do, dear? What are we gonna do?
He stands to leave. I hear his heavy feet plod against the floor. He returns to his room, and the door clicks shut.
