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the key this morning
and all I got was a whir and a rattle. Called the RAC, but the guy said it was
the death rattle. Or repairs upwards of a thousand bucks, which is the same as
saying it’s the death rattle.”
    He stared at the sheets for a moment. “It’s
odd, but I’m going to miss that purple monstrosity.”
    She nodded. “So I called a taxi.”
    “A taxi? I really was kidding.”
    “I know.”
    He was first to speak again. “Speaking of
death, the physiotherapist visited me this morning.” He swivelled his legs over
the edge of the bed and sat up. “No, not for my brain,” he said in response to
her blank stare. “Apparently the brain is connected, indirectly, to all sorts
of things. Who’d’ve guessed.”
    He eased himself over the lip of the bed
the way he had slid into a heated pool just two weeks prior. But the air in the
room did not buoy him as the chlorine-saturated water had. Instead it seemed to
thrust down upon his shoulders, threatening to buckle him at the knees. He
stood up straight and waited for the fireworks behind his eyelids to die.
    “What are you doing?” she said, alarmed.
    “My catheter’s out (sure you needed to know
that) and I don’t fancy sitting in a pool of my own urine this morning.
Tomorrow perhaps, but not on a Sunday.”
    He took a step with his right leg toward
the bathroom, and as he began to shift his left in the long familiar
counterpart motion, it dragged, biting on the sticky linoleum. It slowed him,
sucked at his balance. An alien sense of mutiny slid up his leg, and his shoulders
twisted to compensate.
    Finally, grudgingly, the leg prodded
forward.
    Dee moaned. He didn’t need to look at her
to know she had covered her mouth.
    “It’s okay,” he said, reaching the bathroom
at last. He paused to catch his breath. “It’s just fallout. The surgeon said
there would be some. It’ll work itself out.” He didn’t tell her Thorpe hadn’t
said the last part.
    They talked until lunch, and by then it
almost felt normal. An orderly laid lunch out and asked Rasputin where in his
skinny frame he was planning on stuffing it, all the while looking at the portrait
he had sketched of her at breakfast.
    When Rasputin began to dig in the dishes,
Dee stood, hugged him over the lunch tray, and wedged a piece of paper among
the plates.
    “I finally got hold of your parents,” she
said, and left.
    He retrieved the note and unfolded it. It
was an A4 sheet. Crisp peaks and valleys remained where the paper had been
folded, dividing it into eight segments. Printed on it was a small amount of
text, and from its layout and font he saw immediately that it was an email.
    He scanned its message:
     
    “Our Dearest
Rasputin.
    Deanne told us you have been in a very
serious accident, but have come through it! What a rich vein of insights must
now be open to you. We’re envious. :)
    Her email caught us on the brink of
exploring Prague! We had intended on travelling direct to Moscow, but had a
little accident of our own. We were in Verona—home of Romeo and Juliet, you
know—and did not make it to the airport on time. Italians drive as if they are
walking in a mall!
    Stay well. We
will trade stories.
    Love, Beatrice
and Mark.”
     
    Rasputin sat staring at the letter as the
echo of his mother’s voice died in his ears. He closed his hand in a fist over
the paper, destroying its symmetry, and flung it at the gap left by the open
toilet door.
    He took his head in his hands and, for the
second time since coming out of the coma, broke open and spilled tears.
     
    Two weeks later he sat in the hospital
foyer waiting for the courtesy car that would take him home. He wore blue jeans
and a faded green t-shirt instead of the pale blue hospital pyjamas he had been
wearing when he had woken from the coma. His chin and cheeks were unevenly
shaded with dark stubble. He hadn’t looked at himself much lately. The purple
seam of his surgical scar could just be seen beneath his cap. Its