Compare Scars

Eleven on a Tuesday and the waiting room is at about forty percent, which for Saint-Mary's is empty.

You're holding your wrist at an angle wrists don't go. I have a Wildwood t-shirt wrapped around my hand and it's coming through.

"What happened?"

"Kitchen accident." What happened is I put my hand through the hallway drywall after reading her letter, and drywall is not soft, and there was a stud.

"Bike crash," you say, and your eyes do something.

There's one magazine left worth having and we split it, hip to hip, reading a profile of a chef neither of us has heard of. You do the facts in English and the opinions in French. I follow. It's easier to be cruel about someone in a language you're borrowing.

Triage calls numbers. Not names — numbers, like a deli counter.

They get to you first. Before you go you write your number on the back of my good hand with a pen you took off the triage desk.

"Pour comparer les cicatrices."

I never call. You didn't think I would. You wrote it on the hand, not on paper.

Four hours later they closed it up and told me to keep it dry. It came off in the sink at home. I let it.