Noah regarded the object beside him. “Hostile.”
“What has it done?”
“It has a smug personality.”
She nodded solemnly and made a note.
Noah looked at me. “You see why I like her.”
“I assume she is documenting a psychiatric concern.”
“Only the cane’s,” Dr. Whitcomb said. “Physically, how are you doing?”
“Better. I can walk farther. Stairs remain an insult.”
“Headaches?”
“Most days.”
“Severity?”
“Usually a two. Sometimes three. A few have been worse.”
“Nightmares?”
Noah’s gaze shifted toward me.
“Not as often.”
“What happens when you have one?”
“Reid brings me back.”
“How?”
“He tells me where I am. The date. What I’m hearing. Rain instead of metal. The yard instead of the road.”
His right hand moved across the narrow space between our chairs.
I met it with mine.
“And sometimes,” he added, “he whistles.”
A faint smile touched Dr. Whitcomb’s mouth.
“The three-note signal.”
Noah nodded.
The whistle had woven itself into our days again.
Across the workshop when machinery drowned out voices.
Up the stairwell when I needed to tell him I was coming home.
From the kitchen when Noah woke from a nap and needed to know I had not vanished.
Two short notes.
