"Did you claim Areana?" Gertrude asked.
He huffed. "Areana is a goddess. I courted her."
"Dating is the modern term for courting."
"No, it's not. Dating and courting are not the same thing. Courting is intentional. Dating is noncommittal."
"There is something to that."
He was so surprised to hear her agree with him that he tried to turn his head and look at her over his shoulder, but he still didn't have that range of motion.
She chuckled. "Don't look so surprised. Sometimes the things you say make sense."
"I always make perfect sense."
"From your perspective." She turned the chair so he could see the length of the pool. "That's the shallow end," she said, gesturing at the near end of the pool. "You'll start there. Hip-deep water, holding the rail. As you regain function, you'll progress into deeper water. Eventually, you'll do laps, but that's probably months away."
"Months?"
"Yes. Perhaps a year."
He had assumed his recovery was going to progress faster now. He'd been relishing the new sensation in his toes, the small return of feeling in his calves, treating each tiny development as evidence that the timeline was shorter than it appeared. He had been telling himself a story in which he would be on his feet in a matter of weeks.
Gertrude had just deleted that story and replaced it with something far gloomier.
Not that the other one was cheerful.
"Take me back," he said. "I'm tired."
She studied him for a moment in the polished steel surface of a panel beside the door. He could see her reflection there, faintly, and she looked thoughtful rather than annoyed. Then she shrugged, took the handles of the chair, and wheeled him around.
They retraced their path down the corridor in silence. Daniel followed, the sound of his footsteps at their backs.
The elevator opened on the first wave of her hand, and they rode up the eight seconds, or perhaps it was eight seconds in the other direction, and then they were back in his corridor, and the door to the clinic.
Gertrude wheeled him in and transferred him back to the bed. Then she arranged his pillows and his blanket.
He let her do all that without speaking.
She was about to leave when he stopped her. "Can you check when Areana is coming?"
The nurse turned and looked at him with an expression that was not exactly pity but close enough.
"I am not your secretary, Navuh. Areana will come when she wishes to come, and she informs me of her schedule when she wishes. She did not inform me today."
He looked at her for a moment, and then he nodded and turned his face toward the television mounted across from his bed.
The door clicked shut behind Gertrude, and the mechanical sound of the locks engaging followed.
He lay there and listened to the silence.
The pool was ugly. The ladies were dating. Azul, the therapist, wasn't coming. He would not be on his feet in a few weeks. Areana came when she pleased, and it seemed like she pleased less often than she used to.
He closed his eyes.
She would come today because she always came eventually, and he would wait, because waiting was all he could do now.
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