Page 23 of Fox
It doesn’t make sense.
I don’t know how much time has passed because time is not operating correctly.
It folds, extends, and doubles back on itself. I feel as if I’m inside a dream, moving through spaces that don’t hold their shape.
At some point, there are brighter lights and the smell changes, antiseptic and cold.
More hands.
More voices.
“GCS seven on arrival?—”
“CT showing subdural?—”
“Multiple rib fractures, left side, pneumo?—”
“She’s going to need?—”
The sounds layer over each other.
Then they slip through.
I cannot hold them.
I cannot find the surface.
Then the smell changes—not antiseptic, not cold.
Something else.
Persimmons! And herbs, and the particular dry sweetness of a farmers market in October, and then his hand on the smallof my back, steering me gently, and the light is different now, softer, residential.
“Welcome, sweetheart.”
We are in the Germantown house. When I moved in. Before I knew what it would become to me—before I planted things in it, before I learned its sounds, before it learned mine.
The room is bright, and I flinch at the lights.
There are loud beeps hurting my ears.
They’re steady and mechanical.
Where am I?
But I can’t open my eyes.
I can’t move my head.
There is something on my face.
My body is an enormous, imprecise weight that I am tethered to but cannot fully inhabit.
“Fox,” I whisper because I can smell him on top of all the other smells.
“Yes, sweetheart.” I can hear him over all the other sounds.
“Love you,” I mumble.
