It was small. Messy. A wooden desk covered in papers. Two tall bookcases. A window looking out at our backyard, where I saw, for the first time, the vegetable garden Rose and I had planted last spring.
I sat down in his chair. It creaked.
I opened the top drawer of his desk with shaking hands.
If he’d lied about this, what else had he hidden?
I found stacks of research.
Medical journals, hundreds of them, with pages folded down and notes scribbled in the margins. Surgical sketches, drawn in pencil, of eyes and nerves and things I didn’t understand. Notebooks full of dates and numbers and handwriting I couldn’t read yet. My eyes weren’t good enough for small handwriting.
But I could read the names on the folders.
They were all labeled in thick black marker.
CASE STUDIES — OPTIC NERVE.
SWISS TRIAL DATA.
GRAFT V.7.
