Raveling by Peter Moore Smith Page B

and Fiona’s skin shines whitely, illuminated by the fiery torchlight.
    He looks at me directly, and Fiona regards me suspiciously from the corner of her eye while she tells him her secret. What
     was it? What was she saying?
    Why wouldn’t she tell me?

    Katherine arrived to work late, as usual, as she had practically every morning since she started this job, and took the very
     last staff spot, walking the entire length of the hospital parking lot to the clinic, her arms full of forms she wouldn’t
     get to, a newspaper she would never read. The section of the
Times
she had dropped yesterday still lay on the ground. She stepped over it, thinking she’d pick it up on the way home. She would
     have to start getting in earlier, she told herself. She would have to get her life together. Katherine held everything under
     one arm and pushed her fingers through her hair, realizing the familiar insane tangle was even worse than usual. In the car
     she had noticed a run in her panty hose from her ankle to her knee. There was an ink stain on her sleeve she hadn’t seen at
     home. Jesus Christ, she was falling apart. How the hell did she expect to impress anyone, much less a neurosurgeon, when she
     was such a mess?
    She thought of the way she had flirted with my brother last night, the phone call after she’d gotten home, and her face went
     hot. She would pretend it had never happened.
    As she entered the clinic she saw that Elizabeth had arranged a pot of tea with lemon on a tray and was filling the pot with
     hot water from the kettle. “Elizabeth,” Katherine said, approaching, her voice soft.
    “I thought I would save you some time,” her secretary said, whispering, “You’re late. And I thought it would be nice.”
    Katherine shook her head. “It
is
nice,” she said. “You are the nicest person in the world. I don’t deserve you.”
    Elizabeth followed Katherine into her office and placed the tray on the least cluttered piece of desk she could find. “You
     have David Ogden here right away,” Elizabeth said, still whispering for some reason. “He’s been waiting fifteen minutes already.
     And then you have Marie Forche and after that, after
her
, I mean, you have Pilot Airie. That is your morning.”
    “Thanks.” Katherine picked up the little pot and poured herself a cup. “You can send David in right now.” She dipped the wedge
     of lemon into the cup. There was even a jar of honey.

    I had been coated with molten glass that had since hardened around my skin. It was the medication, I guess. I couldn’t smile.
     I couldn’t frown. If I tried to move the muscles of my face, I thought, it would shatter and cut me to pieces. “I’m sorry
     about the other day,” I told Katherine, entering, closing the door softly behind me.
    She got up from her desk and extended her hand. “Sorry?”
    “I wasn’t feeling myself.” I moved the shoelace from one hand to the other, shook hers mechanically, and then sat on the office
     couch. I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt like myself. I wondered what
myself
felt like. Perhaps it wasn’t coated with glass. Perhaps it was
all
glass. I wore a pair of old gray sweatpants and a T-shirt I remembered buying at least five or six years ago, I think it
     was in college. I wondered why it was even here. Did my mother bring it? I couldn’t remember putting this T-shirt on. I had
     a feeling it said something humiliating, but I was too afraid to look down and read it.
    Katherine Jane DeQuincey-Joy sat in the brown office chair opposite me and smiled reassuringly. “I imagine that’s a bit of
     an understatement,” she laughed. “Not feeling well, I mean.”
    I tried to form a smile, too, but I could feel the glass starting to crack, so I stopped. I twisted the shoelace around and
     around my middle finger.
    Around and around and around.
    “Last time we spoke,” she said, “you told me you were hearing voices, arguments in the light fixture, that kind of