Wednesday
Slice of Life intermission.
Theo let himself in at twenty past eight with the code he'd used for four years. He was carrying a paper bag that had gone see-through at the bottom.
The blinds on the east side were already up. She had never touched them before the hospital. Now she raised them every morning, and he had stopped noting it as strange somewhere around day three. He set the bag on the kitchen island, put the cardboard tray of coffees next to it, and took out his phone to finish the email he'd started in the elevator.
"You're early," she said from the hallway.
"I'm on time. You're up."
She came in barefoot, wearing a grey sweatshirt with a band logo half cracked off the front. Her hair was still wet from the shower and had soaked dark patches into the shoulders. She looked at the bag first and then at him.
"What is it?"
"Egg sandwiches from the place on Calder." He sent the email and put the phone face down. "Yours has no tomato. You always picked it out, but I don't know if that's still a thing."
She thought about it longer than a tomato deserved. "Get one with tomato next time. I'll find out."
He opened his notes app and typed tomato? under a list that already read oat milk (ok), cinnamon (no), sparkling water (yes, a lot).
They ate at the island because the dining table was covered in fan mail he hadn't sorted yet. She unwrapped her sandwich carefully and ate with her whole attention on it, the way she'd eaten everything since the hospital. Theo had decided early that he wouldn't watch her do it, so he looked at the city, his coffee, or his own food.
When he was halfway through, he took the little plastic pill case out of his jacket. He pressed the Tuesday flap open by mistake, then the Wednesday one, and tipped the pill into his palm. He swallowed it with a mouthful of tap water from the glass beside the sink.
"What's that?"
"Losartan. Blood pressure."
"Since when?"
"About two years." He rinsed the glass. "You knew."
"I knew," she said. She tore a corner off the bread and didn't eat it. "I don't think I ever asked about it."
"There's not much to ask. One a day. My doctor says fewer energy drinks, and I say yes."
"Do you?"
"Fewer than I did."
She nodded and went back to the sandwich. A minute later she asked whether the elevator in his building was still broken. It was. He'd been taking the stairs for nine days and had started to resent the man on the fourth floor who left his running shoes outside his door to air out. He said this, and she asked which floor Theo lived on. Six. She asked whether the man with the shoes ran every day. Theo didn't know. He said he'd watch.
"What did you do last night?"
"Watched half of a baking show and fell asleep on the couch."
"What were they baking?"
He had to think. "Something with pears. One of them dropped it."
"The whole thing?"
"Face down. He just stood there."
She laughed at that, briefly, more breath than sound. Then she asked what happened to him, and Theo admitted he'd been asleep before the verdict.
He cleared the wrappers and brought his laptop over. She pulled her feet up onto the stool rung and wrapped both hands around the second coffee.
"Okay," he said. "Small things first."
"All right."
"The stream clip got reposted a lot over the weekend. The statement part. Numbers are up on everything, followers, subs, the back catalogue. Comments are mostly kind. I've got the filter on for the rest, and I'm not sending you any of it unless you ask."
"I won't ask."
"Good." He scrolled. "Marcus wants a call Thursday at eleven about timelines."
"Tell him Friday."
"He'll say Thursday works better for him."
"Then Friday works better for me."
Theo typed. "Friday at eleven."
"Afternoon."
"Friday at two." He moved on. "The discharge papers said to see a GP within two weeks. I got you Dr. Okafor on Monday at nine-forty. I'll drive."
"You don't have to drive."
"I'll drive," he said, and she let it stand.
"Insurance sent a statement for the ambulance and the ER. It's not a bill. It's all covered except a co-pay, which I already paid from the household card." He turned the screen toward her because she had leaned in a little. "You don't need to do anything with it."
She read it anyway. Her eyes stayed on the line with the date and the unit number for a while. Then she sat back. "Okay."
"Interview requests." He opened a spreadsheet. "Eleven since Sunday. Two podcasts, a magazine, a morning show, and some blogs I've never heard of. My suggestion is none for now and maybe one in a month, if you want, with someone we choose."
"None for now."
"The Aldine called about holding a date in late October. Nothing to decide yet. I said we'd talk in a few weeks."
"Keep them warm."
"They're warm." He scrolled again. "The cleaner wants to know about the plant on the terrace. The tall one. She thinks it's dead."
Morgana looked through the glass at the planter by the railing, where something brown and leggy leaned against the corner.
"Water it once," she said. "If it still looks like that next week, it can go."
He wrote that down too.
The schedule took longer than everything else.
He wanted two streams a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays at nine, capped at two hours. She wanted three hours. He pointed out that the last one ran three and a half and she'd been grey by the end. She pointed out that she'd felt fine. He said she'd felt fine in the way people feel fine just before they don't, and that he was the one who had to answer the chat about whether she was okay.
"Two and a half," she said.
"Two and a half, with a hard stop. I'll put a timer in the corner of your monitor."
"You'll put a timer on me."
"On the monitor."
She looked at him over the rim of the cup. He knew the look from four years of working for her. It was the one she'd used on sound engineers and label lawyers. It meant she had already decided to let him win and wanted him to notice. He had always noticed. Lately it landed differently. He could see the look and also see past it, the way you can see a window's reflection and the street behind it at the same time.
"Fine," she said.
"Fine." He typed it in. "No shows until we've talked to Okafor. No travel. I'll block Sundays so nobody can book anything."
"What do I do on Sundays?"
"Nothing. That's the idea."
She seemed to consider this the same way she'd considered the tomato.
At a quarter to ten he packed the laptop away and folded the paper bag flat along its creases. He put it in the recycling, then took it out again, because it had grease on it, and moved it to the other bin.
"How are you," she said. It didn't sound like a question she was asking to be polite.
He thought about giving the easy answer and decided against it.
"I'm fine. Sleeping okay." He zipped the laptop bag. "Everything's faster, which is annoying. I finished the inbox by nine-thirty yesterday and then stood in my kitchen for twenty minutes with nothing to do."
"What did you do?"
"Cleaned out the fridge."
"Was it bad?"
"There was a lemon in there I don't remember buying."
She smiled into her coffee.
He went to the door, stopped, and came back for the cardboard tray, because he would think about it all day if he left it on her counter. She watched him do it without comment. When he looked back from the hallway, she had taken her coffee out onto the terrace and was standing by the planter in her bare feet, looking down at the brown stalks. She was holding the watering can the cleaner kept by the door, and she hadn't tipped it yet.
In the elevator he opened his email, found Marcus's thread, and wrote that Friday at two worked better.