There is a door at the back of her mind. Curled against soundproofing, she sensed it: Warped wood painted shut; a hungry, patient wind whispering underneath.

.

#

He is back in her bed now. (She is back in his.)

Nights are darker now, shutters closed against inevitable city night lights. He cannot sleep if there is light; sometimes, too often, cannot sleep at all, even in the depthless dark of a shuttered bedroom. Some visceral memory of the undertow tells his body to resist. Perhaps.

She throws him a lifeline of words and touch: in case. Low murmur, her hand on his, thumb stroking wrist. When she senses the tide near, dark waves lapping him gently, she stills her hand, her whispers. Waits.

Then lies awake, for three, four, five hours, listening to him sleep.

Remembers.

.

The comfort of machines. Gasp of the ventilator – in. . . out. . . in. Counterpoint of the heart monitor. A rhythm she hated; learned to feel reassured by; not quite, to love.

.

When fear silts up her lungs, her hand crab-crawls towards him, reads the message of his warmth.

.

#

People spilled over the wreckage of Kramer's door; then more people still. Blinking at motes in sudden daylight, she waited for Sam's slight silhouette to appear in the splintered frame. Damsel, distressed: the wrong knight - too tall, entirely too bulky - cutting her ties, helping her stand.

Whistle of air at the back of her mind.

.

#

He is awake and up before dawn now, his body on hospital time still. Following scents of frying bacon she finds him in the kitchen, dressed already, wet hair sticking up every-which-way. He has brought new-old preferences from his sleep, a taste for the simple, coarse foods of his youth.

Barefoot, she walks up behind him, kisses the nape of his neck, murmurs "morning, love," into the collar of his shirt. He half-turns. Half-smiles: "Sit. Almost done."

Kitchen or crime scene: work makes him the man she knows.

She sits. Watches. Is glad.

.

Five weeks in she arrived, one late afternoon, and found him empty – awake. Eyes open, seeing-unseeing: the brain stem at work, consciousness optional.

Spooked, she sat. Took his hand and recalled him: resolve and precision and curiosity, and bloody-mindedness, yes; hands deft and intent on steering wheel, laptop keys, obsessively lining up pens; fingers wandering, softly, down her midriff, circling her navel.

.

They make love on the austere designer rug in the living room after breakfast, or amid the straight lines of the black leather sofa; sometimes - not often, because he says he has spent far too much time in bed - on bedsheets cooled by morning air. He is slow, careful, reverent in a way he wasn't before.

She explores him warily. Scars disturb the patterns of fine hair on his legs and chest. The smallest jolt her the most: traces of cannulas; a dip in his throat where a breathing tube went in. She needs to touch him when she sees them, feel him touch her back. Without touch she crumbles, feels him crumble against her - two figures of sand drying in the breeze, disintegrating - blowing away.

.

#

A gust flaps her coat as she steps outside, and she takes a moment to do up the buttons. Wind whips hair across her face, into her eyes – a sharp pain, air solid like the palm of a hand. She leans into it, and it doesn't disperse her.

Doorknobs, desks, computer keys do not turn insubstantial at her touch. In meetings and hallway encounters colleagues speak a language she understands. Work is intense, occasionally satisfying, no longer a featureless stretch of time that fills the wait in between the waiting.

.

They asked her to stay the night for observation. She left. The super drove her, hospital to hospital. A warm room; high-railed bed; too many machines. Ruth's embrace squeezed the breath from her, didn't ease. She couldn't answer, couldn't make her arms move.

She couldn't hear the wind's whistle, over the machine's breathing.

She felt it: still pushing against straining wood as she settled down, inside herself, with her back to the door.

.

At lunchtime meetings conversation flows easily now: work and politics, films seen and people met. Inquiries about Sam are made and answered lightly. She parts from a friend with a hug, a smile, bodies unburdened by inexpressibles. With sudden gratitude she holds on a tad longer than necessary.

Remembers:

.

The concern of friends; the sensible, self-interested imperative: move on. What filled her with a simmering anger were things not spoken. Suggestions of survivor's guilt. More insidious: he's not worth it.

She couldn't even argue with that.

.

#

At night she returns, not to the bright despair of the hospital but to a flat alive with his presence. She speaks and he answers. She tells him about work and he talks about rehab, his job, he says, and a right rubbish one it is, the hardest he has ever worked, and not a promotion in sight.

He is doing well, will be doing even better in a month or three. He may be back on the job as early as spring, they say. In his eyes she sees the impatience, a kind of pain, and it's better than emptiness, and better, so much better than the evasion she remembers.

.

Watery sky outside, and his face as blank. He had built himself a towering spire of routine and duty and busy self-importance, climbed it, slowly, so gradually that she became aware of it only when he was out of reach. Mocking voice in her mind: too late. Trying to fight, belatedly - trying to understand, trying to claw him back from his lonely ledge: too late. Her mouth making words that found no purchase.

.

#

It is half past seven, and he is running down fast. Things he never had to waste thought on take effort now. He gets lost on his way through a mildly involved sentence. Embarrassed, he grows silent, quietly tentative.

She echoes his silence, makes it comfortable.

They clear away the dishes together.

He used to be good at speaking; never that good at communicating. There is no dissimulation now when he touches her arm, no misunderstandings about a hand laid on her shoulder. She leans back against him, lightly; for a moment, feels him lean into her.

.

There was less of him every day. The wind, entering through the cracks, was dispersing him grain by grain.

She sat, shoring up memories.

.

#

Some days she comes home to find the table half set, the kitchen hazed with smoke. He sits folding a napkin into ever-smaller squares.

"There was a . . . a phone call," he says. He clears his throat. It's the smoke. "Nothing important. Just Mum."

She goes and opens a window. He watches.

"Oh," he says. "I would have done that."

She draws a glass of water; waits while he drinks.

"Anyway," he says.

She waits.

"Shouldn't be answering the phone when I'm cooking," he says. "Or maybe," laughing, humourless, "I should leave myself a note when I do. 'Remember stove!'"

He does leave post-it notes to himself. There is one on the bathroom mirror. It says, "1.) Floss (evenings); 2.) Brush teeth; 3.) Wash; 4.) Morning only: shave (don't forget after-shave); 5.) Comb". There is one on the fridge door that says, "Have you taken your medications?"

"You have to give it time," she says. "It'll get better. It already has."

For a moment she believes that he will not look at her but then he does, and the fear on his face rouses her own like an animal that jumps from the pit of her stomach to close her throat in its jaws.

.

Maya isn't a damsel, to be thrown in a dungeon of dust and insulating foam. Maya is her own knight, armoured in righteousness and the authority of her office, and a black belt in jujutsu.

A moment of inattentiveness; an instant's poor judgement – that's all it takes.

Knights fall.

.

She watches his fingers, gone back to folding the napkin. What if it isn't the brain damage, she thinks, doesn't say. What if it's the tumor?

"I'm going to die horribly," he says. Trying it on for size.

.

Here she is. The floor, grains of old dirt pressing into her cheek. Her spine, her taped wrists pushed into mouldering softness. Window covered in panels that swallow sound and light both.

Here they are. A white room, a breathing machine.

Whisper of wind. Creak of wood.

.

Not yet, she thinks. Not like this. Not now. She looks at him – remembers, suddenly, that she is brave. She closes the window because the smoke is gone, and the wind is coming in.

"Don't say that," she says, forcefully. "Don't even think that. It isn't set in stone."

.

Air whistling under the door.

.

"Stay," she says.

.

#

(She stays.)

.

.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

None of this happened.

What happened, is this: she left him. He died.

It's all right, though.

Cut along the dotted line.