When the doctor turned the corner, I could tell he was surprised to see me.

“Dr. Massengale,” Roland said. “This is my wife, Whitney.”

I put my left hand in my pocket.

“You can’t stay for long, I’m afraid,” the doctor said, swiping his card for the door.

“I just want to say goodbye,” said Roland, and I knew he meant for the last time.

I was struck by the size of the room, given the cramped quarters I’d seen everywhere else in the hospital. Its edges were shadowy, the lights dim. A half-dozen patients could be accommodated in here, but Floella was alone.

We approached the bed. One side of her face was shorn away. Crusted stitches held her scalp on like a swim cap. She’d lost her right eye, but the lid remained, a bit of wrinkled skin over the socket.

The worst was the damage to her throat. Dr. Massengale hovered over my shoulder as I took it in. Sprayed with teeth marks, the throat looked like a sleeve without an arm in it, hardly enough to join the torso to the head. I’d never seen injuries like that.

Cristóbal took the dog home, Roland told me, and hosed it down in his yard.

I turned away, nearly colliding with Dr. Massengale.

“Your mother-in-law is very fortunate,” he said. “The artery was severed. She should’ve bled to death, right in the street.”

“Why didn’t she?”

“As I explained to your husband, when we understood she qualified for emergency research, she was the beneficiary of a clinical trial here at Ascension.”

I’d never heard these words before. “Emergency research?”

“Well, if we’d known she had family, the protocol would’ve been different. But in her condition, you understand, the first responders made a determination. The trial saved her life.”

“Trial,” I repeated. “What sort of trial?”

The doctor’s little eyes glimmered, like the idea was in his mind, fully formed. I knew he wanted to put it into words.

He smiled and asked us, “How long have you been married?”

“Not long,” said Roland, who leaned toward Floella, whispered something in her ear, and came away from the bed.

As Dr. Massengale led us to the door, I noted the details: the locked room, the impatient nurse. There was something here.

“I’d like to know more about the trial,” I said.

“I’m afraid I can’t get into it now.” Dr. Massengale jotted something on a pad. “But if you call me at this number tomorrow, we can chat.”

He ripped off the page, handed it to me, and, with a salute to Roland, closed the door behind us.

4.

Roland knew how to fuck me. I could only come one way, eaten out slowly then pounded from behind. After that I’d do basically anything, for however long, but my way first.