side to lay the inside bare. I wait for my stomach to turn, but instead, all I can feel is the sea spray from that day on the rocks with Hetty, the crab turning black in my hands. It was still alive as it broke apart.
I wonder if I will be too.
* * *
—
“I have something special for you,” Teddy says. The clock tells me afternoon but not the day. Same blue plastic suit, the same surgical mask. I like his eyes, I think. They look like mine.
First the left strap undone, then the right. Whiteboard in my hands, a cramp in my fingers.
Good special?
“Is there any other kind?” he says. “We’re going outside.”
Seriously
“Seriously.”
Why outside
“Dr. Paretta wants a little more color in your cheeks.” Teddy draws back the curtain. Ward awry, beds pushed to one end. “She suggested a walk. Outside was my idea. Close your eyes, though. I want it to be a surprise.”
Teddy, eager and happy to help, and invisible to the doctors here, with their world narrowed down to my charts and me. Breaking rules, because nobody’s told him what they are.
I start to push myself up, but he rests a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll help you.”
He lifts my legs. Swings them around to hang off the bed. Hands cold through the suit, hair on my legs static and standing.
My jacket is stuffed in the cabinet against the wall, and Teddy helps me into it, does up the clasps before crouching down to lace my boots.
“Right,” he says once he’s finished. “We’re all set. Need some help getting up?”
I shake my head and stand up. I think I’m getting stronger. Even if I’m not, I don’t need help.
I carry the whiteboard, marker in my pocket. Teddy takes my hand. Guides me out and around three corners. I memorize them, lay them out in my head. When he says I can open my eyes, it’s in front of a narrow, dented door. Not all the way closed, and through the gap at the bottom I see grass just starting to die.
“Go ahead,” he says, and helps me lift my hand to open it.
Wind pulling at me, whipping the hem of my hospital gown. So cold I know it’ll steal the feeling from me, but I won’t mind.
“Deep breaths. Nice and easy.”
I nod. Try not to gulp it down, the air, the spice and sweetness. Together we step out and let the door creak shut behind us.
A fence, the kind with wire across the top to keep you from getting out. Trees pressed up against it, their branches curling through. Between it and me, the ground is restless, cresting and breaking in small hills, splitting where the cold has reached deep. Turning brown and brittle.
“Come on,” Teddy says. “Let’s walk.”
My bare legs prickle with goosebumps, sweat chilling me to the bone, but we keep going. The closer I get, the clearer the fence is. Step, and step, and a give in my knees, and Teddy wraps his arm around my waist. At last, there with the forest encroaching. I wind my fingers around the chain link.
Camp Nash. It must be. If I squint, I can make it look like Raxter, like home.
Teddy says something. World too loud. I prop the whiteboard against the fence.
Can’t hear, I write.
He tries again—fuck, he says, it’s freezing—but I pretend I don’t hear, shake my head. Reach out, flick the fabric surgical mask over his face. I want him to take it off.
“No way.”
We can go inside
If you want
“Hey, don’t be like that. We’re having fun out here, right?”
I learned when I was little. Quiet. That’s how to get what I want.
“You know I’m really not supposed to.” He waits. Then a sigh, probably, and he backs up a few steps. “Okay, but you stay over there.”
Because he is nineteen, because he isn’t thinking. Because I’ve practiced this smile enough times to know what it can do.
Teddy reaches behind his head, to where the mask ties, and fumbles with the knot until it drops. And there he is. Full lips. Jaw cut sharp. Teddy.
“Byatt.”
I wave, and he grins. I lift the whiteboard, prop it on my hip as I write.
Can’t I come say hi
“No,” he says immediately, holding out a hand to ward me off. “You promised.”
I didn’t actually, and I make sure I look just right, a little shy, a little curious.
“Look,” he says, “I know it must be lonely in that ward all by yourself. I’ll try to