He wasn’t sure how long he lay there, but when he opened his eyes the sky had gone blue-gray. He couldn’t feel his legs at all. He’d been grinding his teeth the way he did at night sometimes, the nights of wells coming up dry and why-didn’t-Michael-call and what-about-Marie. He felt a pulling in the back of his mind, an all-over tingling like anesthesia taking hold, and he struggled to stay alert. The sky was very dark and the stars were out in his peripheral vision. Finally he heard the automatic garage door grind open on the other side of the house, and after a minute a light went on in the kitchen, casting a warm yellow square inches from his head. Marie.

“Mmm,” he said. “Marie. Maria.”

Faintly, through the storm windows he had so proudly put up before Marie mentioned them, he heard the water running in the kitchen sink. Marie washing her hands. Marie washed her hands fifty times a day. She said the public health nurses all did it, and she damn sure wasn’t going to stop just because Jack thought it was funny. His breathing had stepped up again, and there didn’t seem to be much air left anymore. He rolled to get a better shot at the door with his voice.

“Maria,” he said. He wouldn’t tell her about the rubbery numbness of his lips, he would just show her the thing sticking out of his wrist. He wouldn’t tell her about the tingling, twisted feeling in his good hand. The wound she could deal with, although it looked bad and his shirt was soaked with blood. The freezing-up of his body was too bad to tell, and he would have to keep it from her if he could.

He heard the clatter of metal against metal. His mustard knife thrown in the sink. He hadn’t put the sandwich things away. But then she must know he’d been interrupted and left things unfinished. He took a great gasp of air to make room for the surge of hope in his chest. Another yellow square appeared on the deck, this time just behind his head. Marie in the hallway. The paint in his hair was dry now; he’d have to repaint the boards he’d messed up. But panic rose like bile from his stomach at the thought that he wouldn’t repaint it, he would die here on the deck.

“Marie,” he called, louder than before, as loudly as he could. The r sound was impossible to make with his lips frozen up. “Mah-wee!” He couldn’t slow his breathing down.