I wiggle to an upright seat in bed, and reach as if to touch my forehead, then stop. I already know I’m not fevered with allergy or infection. In the recovery room at the Aesthetica™ center, I made it through the first twenty-four hours, that slim window when infection is most likely. Now, on my own, I’ve made it through the first forty-eight. I have arrived safely, conclusively, on the other side. I listen for sounds from the bathroom, listen for the dogs. But there’s just a short sort of ticking, coming from an air vent. It stops. I close my eyes.

MAYBE SOME PART of me had known I couldn’t do it. Even as I stormed toward the room with my fingers wrapped around the knife’s hilt, maybe I knew I wouldn’t use it. I was incapable of a bloody #MeToo set piece, maybe I always knew that. Or it was simply the sight of Henry, stripped down to his ballooning boxer shorts, elderly skin and salt and pepper chest hair, that stopped me. If it had been Jake, who knows what would have happened. In the moment, I felt myself jump into the room, into Henry’s arms, felt the knife fall from my hands and any purpose I had imagined it serving. I heard myself scream, then cry when he caught me, small, frustrated sobs. It felt like falling into another induced slumber. But I was awake, emotional, alert enough despite the drugs.

“Lone Star, is that you?” he asked, and sat me in an armchair, upholstered in slick pleather.

“Oh, it’s me,” I started, but my voice scratched, catching on cuts made where a tube went down my throat and kept me breathing. “It’s me,” I finished, quieter. Around my feet, two stout dogs milled, whining. I felt their little tongues on my legs, looked down and saw their fat bodies wiggle. They reminded me of babies, but also of pigs. I opened my palms to them absently, gazed around the room as they licked.

“So now you see,” I heard myself say and thought of the knife, whether Henry had watched it fall.

“See what?” He was bent at the waist, trying to corral the dogs, his body unlocking smells: Gillette shaving cream and the clean calendula of the natural deodorant I’d later see propped in the bathroom, next to a ratty toothbrush. “Beto, Bernie,” he barked.