From the corner of my eye, I saw Dr. Perrault enter through an open door, gloved hands held up, brown with Betadine, sterile and safe. Esther put a shower cap on. She said, “Okay, let’s count, honey,” and lowered a mask over my mouth. “Count, honey,” she said, “count.” Her voice was an open door. I walked through it.

15.

I watched Leah leave, I answered Jake’s call, lurching through airport traffic to the fracture of his Bluetoothed voice saying, “Babe, babe, baby,” until the connection shored up and I said, “I miss you.” It was true, and though honesty had felt needy before, now it felt warranted; I didn’t want Jake to underestimate my love and leave me, too.

“How’s your mom?” he asked and then, before I answered, he said, “Listen, big news, Blaze Cannabis needs someone last minute. A promotional party in Arizona. I threw out your name and they want you.”

“Fuck,” I said.

He said, “One night, you stand around, look hot and smoke weed. I got them up to seven K. They’ll send a plane tomorrow.” I merged onto a mottled access road. Out the window, a jackhammer punched potholes into dust.

“Fuck,” I said again. “I don’t know if I can, call you back?”

There was silence and I thought the call had dropped. I touched the screen. Jake was still there and spoke again in a burst of words, his voice high pitched, unfamiliar.

“Yeah, I mean, totally, if you can’t you can’t, but it would be a big favor to me, I mean, after your surgery and the flight to Houston and all—” He was still talking, and the jackhammer was still stuttering, when, as if in spasm, my hand reached out, and touched the red circle to hang up. I sat there for a moment, staring at what I’d done. Someone honked behind me and I drove forward, eyes on the road, then on the phone again, waiting for Jake to call back. But when he did, I couldn’t make myself answer. This was the job I’d been waiting for; Blaze, the money, was everything I wanted. So why was I afraid to take it?

AT THE HOSPITAL my mother slept, unchanged. Nurse Nancy was gone, “Grace” written on the whiteboard in her place. I balled up in the recliner like Leah had, my phone warm as a hand in my hand, buzzing when Jake called back, when he texted, “No service?” and, “Call me.” I ignored the notifications. A strange feeling, watching him want me and wanting him too, but also fearing what he offered.

Grace came in and out of the room. She lifted my mom’s gown to check the bandages around her waist, then moved to the IV, unscrewed caps she wiped with alcohol and plugged into my mother’s arm.

“This is Zofran for the vomiting,” she said. “She’ll be better now.”