“I handled it because it’s my job.”
“Celine.”
“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t compliment me for performing a role you assigned me without asking.”
The rest of the ride is quiet, the diamond on my finger glinting in the streetlights.
He doesn’t ask me to return it. So I don’t, but I slide it off and put it in my pocket. It’s a heavy weight there, waiting, ready for the next time its presence will be required.
I get home Friday evening to find Priya and Lena on the couch with the television on low. Lena is asleep against Priya’s shoulder. Priya looks up when I walk in, presses a finger to her lips.
I set my bag down. Go to the kitchen.
Priya follows me. “She had a rough afternoon,” she says, keeping her voice low. “Pain for a few hours. Wouldn’t let me call anyone. You know how she is.”
“I know how she is.”
“Celine.” She stops and looks at me. “It’s getting worse. The tired is different now. I’ve been watching her for a long time. This tired is different.”
I look at the counter. “I’ll call her doctor in the morning.”
Priya squeezes my arm. We don’t say anything else. She goes back to wake Lena gently. I stand in the kitchen in my work dress, in my heels, listening to my sister’s sleepy voice saying goodnight through the wall.
I let myself feel, for exactly one minute, how frightened I am.
Then I put it away.
The doctor calls Saturday afternoon.
I write the words on the back of an envelope because my hands need something to do. Severe flare. Kidney involvement. Lupus nephritis. A specialist in Zurich. A facility. A timeline. Then, a number that makes the pen feel very heavy.
I call the bank. I call the credit company. I sit at the kitchen table, mapping every option until they close one by one like doors in a corridor. The savings run out in a week. The credit is maxed from the last hospitalization. The house sits around me. The creaking floors. The soap on the counter. The ceiling crack above the window that has been there since I was twelve.
I pick up my phone. Put it down. Pick it up again.
Lena is in the living room. I can hear the television through the wall. I think about her face the second time I brought up selling the house. One look. Conversation over.
I open my contacts. Find his name.
I stare at it for a long time without making the call.
Lena is in bed early on Sunday evening. I sit across from Priya at the kitchen table and tell her everything. The specialist, the facility, the cost. Priya listens without interrupting, which is not her natural state. That alone tells me she already knew it was serious.
When I finish, she’s quiet for a moment.
“I’ll go with her,” she says.
“Priya.”
“She can’t go alone. You can’t leave your job.” She says it the way she says things she has already decided. “I have leave saved. Nothing is keeping me here that can’t be rearranged. I’ll go.”
My throat does something I don’t give it permission for. “I have to figure out the money first.”
“Figure it out,” she says. “I’ll go.”
Lena shuffles out in her robe twenty minutes later, looking for water. She sees us at the table, looks at my face, then looks at Priya’s. “What happened?” she asks.
I tell her about Zurich and the specialist, and watch her sit down slowly and take it in the way she takes everything, without drama, without falling apart. She reaches across the table and puts her hand over mine. “Okay,” she says.
