I turn off the water and say that I’ll give her privacy, but she reaches out and clenches my hand. She says to me, “Don’t go.”
I watch as a convulsing hand attempts to undo the button of her khaki pants. She becomes weak and reaches for the sink to steady herself before she can finish. I step forward and unclasp the button. I lower her onto the toilet seat and pull her pants to the ground. I peel a pair of long johns from her legs and throw a sweatshirt over her head.
She’s crying as she sinks into the bathtub. She lets the water rise up to her knees as she pulls them into her chest. She drops her head to them and her hair falls one way, the last few inches swimming in the water. I kneel beside the bathtub. With my hands, I cup the water and drop it where it doesn’t reach. I soak a washcloth, drape it over the back of her neck. She doesn’t stop shaking.
I try not to look at her. I try not to look below the eyes as she begs me to keep talking, anything to avoid the freezing cold. I try not to imagine the things I can’t see. I try not to think about the color of her pale skin or the curvature of her spine. I try not to stare at her hair, bobbing on the surface of the bath.
I tell her about a lady who lives down the hall from me. This seventy-year-old lady who always manages to lock herself out of her apartment when she takes the trash to the chute down the hall.
I tell her how my mother cut my father out of all our early family photos. All their wedding photos she stuck in the shredder. She let me keep one photo of him. But after we stopped talking I used it for target practice.
I tell her that as a kid I wanted to play in the NFL. Wide receiver, just like Tommy Waddle.
I tell her that I can fox-trot because my mother taught me. But it isn’t the kind of thing I’d ever let anyone see. On the Sundays when she’s having a good day, she plays Frank Sinatra on the radio and we limp around the room. These days I’m better than her, by a long shot. She learned it from her own parents. There was nothing better to do, growing up when times were tough. Really tough. She always told me I knew nothing about being poor, even on those nights that I snuggled up with a sleeping bag in the backseat of our car.
I tell her that if it were up to me I’d live somewhere like this, in the middle of God knows where. The city isn’t for me, all those damn people.
What I don’t tell her is how beautiful she looked that first night. How I watched her sitting alone at the bar, masked by the faded lights and cigarette smoke. I watched her longer than I needed to for the pure pleasure of it. I don’t tell her how the candle made her face glow, how the photograph I was given didn’t do her justice. I don’t tell her any of it. I don’t tell her the way she makes me feel when she looks at me, or how I hear her voice at night, in my dreams, forgiving me. I don’t tell her I’m sorry, though I am. I don’t tell her that I think she’s beautiful, even when I see her look in a mirror and hate the image she sees.
She tires from shaking. I see her eyes close as she begins to fall asleep. I press a hand to her forehead, and I convince myself the fever has gone down. I wake her. And then I help her stand in the bath. I wrap a rough towel around her and help her step over the side of the tub. I help her dress into the warmest clothes I can find, and then I towel-dry the ends of her hair. She lies on the couch before the fire. It’s beginning to die, so I lay a branch across the logs. Before I can cover her with a blanket, she’s asleep, but she continues to hack. I sit beside her and will myself not to sleep. I watch the rise and fall of her chest so I know that she’s alive.
*
There’s a doctor in Grand Marais. I tell her we need to go. She tries to object. We can’t, she says. But I tell her we need to.
I remind her that her name is Chloe. I do everything I can to disguise us. I tell her to pull her hair back, which she never does. On the way, I run into a grocery store for a pair of reading glasses. I tell her to put them on. Not perfect, but it will have to do. I wear my Sox hat.
I tell her we’re paying in cash. No insurance. I tell her not to talk more than she has to. Let me do the talking.
All we need is a prescription.
I drive around Grand Marais for a good thirty minutes before deciding on a doctor. I do this by their names. Kenneth Levine sounds too formal. Bastard probably falls asleep every night to the news. There’s a clinic, but I keep driving—too many people. There’s a dentist, an ObGyn. I decide on some broad named Kayla Lee, a family practitioner with an empty parking lot. Her little sports car is parked out back. Not very practical for the snow on the ground. I tell Mia we don’t want the best doctor in town, just one who knows how to write a prescription.