Before bed the first night, he stood several feet from the bedroom door.
“Do you need anything?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
He started walking away.
“Daniel?”
He turned.
I almost asked him to stay.
Habit is powerful.
Even painful habits.
Instead I said, “Good night.”
“Good night.”
I slept badly.
But for the first night in seventeen years, no hand touched my stomach.
No fingers pressed gently along my skin.
Nobody asked if anything hurt.
I should have felt relieved.
Instead, I felt strangely exposed.
It took me hours to understand why.
I had spent seventeen years resenting the ritual.
And seventeen years depending on it.
That realization embarrassed me.
Two days later, I returned to the hospital for the MRI.
My friend Nora drove me.
Nora had been my closest friend since college.
She was the kind of person who could remain silent for twenty minutes and then ask precisely the question you had been avoiding.
