I turned on the lamp.
The room came into focus all at once.
The man jerked back with one gloved hand raised. He was wearing navy scrubs under a dark jacket. The case was open on the nightstand beside him. Inside it were sealed syringes in a tray, alcohol wipes in a neat row, a coil of clear tubing, packets of medical tape, vials labeled in the small careful print of pharmaceutical labeling.
Elena had pulled the collar of her nightshirt aside. Below her left collarbone, beneath a square of transparent medical dressing, a thin line disappeared under her skin.
I was already halfway off the bed, the specific unreasoning forward motion of a man who has decided something without finishing the decision, when Elena sat up and said my name in a voice I had never heard from her before.
Not the voice of someone caught.
Not fear.
Something desperate. Something that was already past explaining and was asking me to stop before I did something I could not undo.
Daniel. Stop. Please. Stop.
The man took one step back and said his name was Martín. He held up an ID badge with two fingers, the hand slightly shaking, and spoke quickly and evenly in the voice of someone who had been in frightening rooms before and knew that the way out of them was to be calm and clear. Home infusion nurse. Saint Vincent Oncology.
