I hang up, close my eyes for a moment, then get back to work.

• • •

“I’m stoked out,” DeWitt says. “Illin’ big time.”

He does indeed look sick—bags under his eyes, a terrible weariness to him. I check his pulse and his blood pressure, put a thermometer in his mouth. When I take it out, I tell him it’s normal.

“Damn. I like to have a fever when I’m sick. Where’s Frank?”

“Not with me today. Is your incision hurting?”

“Naw. Where is he?”

“He’s with someone who’s visiting me for a little while. Let’s do your dressing, I want to take a look under there and make sure you’re not getting an infection.”

“It ain’t that. Most likely be that bait I had for dinner last night. I invite this new lady out, she say she want sushi. I say, baby, what you want with that Jap crap. She say, oh, Dewitt. And I know I ain’t gon’ get laid without I eat some shit like that. So I do, and then what happens? I spend half the night in the Porcelain Room, both ends open for bidness.”

“Well,” I say, loosening his dressing. “At least you had some pleasure before the pain.”

“Sheeit,” he says. “That’s the worst part. I had to take her home after, she live with her mama, which, believe me, if I’d been apprised of that, wouldn’t never have been no date. And I paid for that dinner! Paid for us both and left a good tip, besides!”

“Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.” I throw away his old dressing, inspect his wound. Healing slowly, but healing.

“Oh, no. I always win, baby.”

I look at him.

“’Cept this time.”

I do his new dressing, silent, lost in my own thoughts. When I’m finished, DeWitt says, “Bring your dog tomorrow. He a more scintillating conversationalist than you. You getting boring as shit.”

“Call me if you get worse,” I say. “Call me if you get better!”

I sigh, lean against the door frame.

“What?”

“Just … Give me a break, DeWitt. You know?”

“Aw, toughen up. Don’t you know you my friend?”

• • •

I stop at a McDonald’s for a quick lunch. At a table nearby is a young mother with her son, about four years old. “My head hurts,” he tells her. She ignores him. “Mom,” he says, “My head hurts.”

“I know, sweetie,” she says, staring off into middle space.

I take the last bite of my fish sandwich, finish my Coke. Then, “Miss?” I say.

The woman looks over.

“Excuse me, but I couldn’t help overhearing what your son said. And I just wanted to tell you that I’m a nurse, and it’s very unusual for a child so young to have a headache.”

She stares at me. “He just bumped it. In the car just now, when he was getting out.”