He glanced over at the bedside table where the balled-up piece of paper still lay. Then, very slowly, careful not to wake Susan, Archie reached over her and plucked the wad of paper from the table. He brought it to his chest, his hand trailing IV lines, and with a glance at Susan, he gingerly uncrumpled the square of yellow paper and flattened it out. He had a second copy at home, written in Gretchen’s elegant handwriting, but Archie had a feeling that Henry had found it and destroyed it. The ten digits stared back at him from the wrinkled yellow paper. They were his connection to Gretchen. “If you need me, darling,” she’d said. Archie had looked at the telephone number so many times that he thought he knew it by heart, but now the digits looked unfamiliar to him, already reordering and fading in his memory.

Archie glanced at Susan. Then he closed his hand, crumpling the note in his fist. A plastic trash bin sat against the wall on the other side of his IV pole. Archie tossed the balled-up Post-it note at it overhand and it sailed through the air and into the trash.

Then he settled back into the bed with Susan. He was suddenly wide awake. Susan squirmed in her sleep, and Archie had to brace himself as her knee pressed again into his tender stitches, but he didn’t care. He stayed very still, trying to be as small as possible, to give her enough room to be comfortable. Her mouth was open slightly, and her breath was hot against his shoulder, making the hair on the back of his neck bristle. His wound didn’t hurt while he was still, and the morphine filled him with a woozy contentment. Susan moved in her sleep again and flopped a foot across his shin. He stayed awake for a long time, watching her like that, and then, finally, he slept.

Acknowledgments

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS