“It wasn’t a pretty scene,” she said to Leland. “He wasn’t just too young for marriage, he was too young for abiding by what I had to do for my own health. I was still so involved that I wanted to forget why I had to do it, even though he was telling me again by fighting me. He was willing to do anything to keep it going. It wasn’t healthy for either of us. He was too young for me and there was no telling which way he was going to change. I wanted somebody older. Not only that, I didn’t want to look at him and see myself as I had been. He telephoned me off and on for almost a year, until I told him that I was going to marry Colin.”

A month before Dr. Roberts planned to discharge her, while they were still talking about what she thought she could expect from a relationship with a man, Dr. Roberts’ wife died of a stroke. In the next weeks he gave up all hope of doing his job with Norma. She was his only patient near discharge at the time and he needed to talk to someone about the things other doctors would expect to hear and which his friends—his wife’s friends, too—would not be able to bear.

“Tonight while I was cooking dinner I remembered a time up in Maine, three or four summers ago. We were walking in the woods and she slipped and grabbed my hand. I held her arm so she wouldn’t fall. Simple thing.” He was sitting back, Norma told Leland, his hands clasped at the back of his neck. “Tonight while I was at the stove I relived the entire moment. I could feel the pressure of her hand again, and the fear in her eyes. Her voice rang out inside me. It’s so curious, Norma. I miss everything about her. There was so much I never gave a thought to. Do you find that shocking for someone in my position to say?”

“No, no, no.”

He said, “She puts her nightgowns—pink, sleeveless, ordinary nightgowns—on a hook on the inside of the closet door. The closet is empty now. I cleaned it out the first morning. I looked in there anyway last night. That doesn’t say much for me as a doctor, does it? I stood there staring at a coat hook, Norma. I was thinking, ‘I should have saved something, at least.’

“I still talk about her in the present tense,” he said. “I don’t want to accept the fact that she’s dead.”