Chapter 4

Theo caught my wrist before I could hide the blood on my glove.

“Are you using your body again to make me feel sorry for you?”

The words landed harder than the cough. I looked at his hand around my wrist and understood that he still believed pain was something I performed for him.

I pulled free.

The black leather had already swallowed most of the red. I closed my fist around the stain, because he had always been kinder to injuries he could not see.

The work lights were hot above me, and the manager waited beside the board with one hand over her mouth. I faced the empty seats, lifted my arms again, and completed the silent curtain call.

I would not let Theo decide which part of me had been real.

The lights went out as I turned for the stairs. In the dark, pain folded through my throat and chest so sharply that I missed the first step.

My knee struck wood. Then the stage rose toward me.

When I woke in the emergency room, Theo was answering a nurse before she finished asking.

“Smoke injury seven years ago,” he said. “No new diagnosis. She has trouble speaking when she is tired.”

The nurse looked from him to me. I lay beneath a thin hospital blanket, my wrist held flat by tape and an IV line.

“What medications are you taking?” she asked.

My chart lay open at the foot of the bed, but Theo looked at it as though his memory had more authority than my body.

Theo opened his mouth again.

I reached for the call bell he had pressed beside my pillow and pulled the cord from his hand. The movement hurt, but it made him stop.

The nurse gave me a tablet. I wrote, I lost my voice. I did not lose my decisions.

For a second, Theo’s face emptied. Then he said, “I was trying to help.”

I typed, That has always been the problem.

He left to call his lawyer about the canceled afternoon meetings. The door had barely closed before my phone rang.

Anika.

“Come back to the oncology unit for treatment tonight,” she said. “You cannot keep treating this as a throat injury.”

“I am not coming back.”

“Elara—”

“I have the second theater.”

A silence opened on the line. Then Anika said, “At least let me arrange the oncology appointment. You need to be seen.”

“I will decide that.”

I deleted the call before the screen went dark.

When I ended the call, the appointment slip from that morning was still folded inside my coat pocket. I took it out and stared at the blue oncology heading until the letters blurred.

I told the nurse it was only an old smoke injury. Then I folded the paper smaller, pressed the bloodstained edge of my glove against it, and tore it in half.

One piece went into my sleeve. The other fell into the trash beside the bed.

Theo returned with rain on his shoulders and a paper cup of water in his hand. He held it toward me, careful now, as if care could be measured by how slowly he moved.

I pushed the tablet toward him.

At least today, you finally saw me fall.

His eyes moved over the words. Then, as he set the cup down, he saw the torn slip in the trash.

The blue heading showed only one word.

ONCOLOGY.