Page 25 of The Same Backward as Forward
I’d given him nothing, and he was acting like my face had laid my every emotion bare.
“You don’t like being looked at.” Harry allowed his lips to curve in the subtlest of smiles. “Tasted, like wine.”
If he thought I was going to drug him just to shut him up—just to get him to stop looking at melike that—he was going to be sorely disappointed. “Better wine than barbecue,” I said. It took a moment for that comment to land.
I saw the exact moment he realized I was referencing his burns.
Harry snorted “Touché, Hannah the Same Backward as Forward.” He propped himself up on his elbows, his back barely elevated off the bed. “I’m nicer when I’m high, and, coincidentally,youare also nicer when I’m high.”
“No. I’m not.”
With abs of steel and an iron will, he pulled himself the rest of the way into a sitting position.
That had to hurt, I thought, but you wouldn’t have been able to tell that from his face.
“Look, Mom,” Harry said, his voice dry as dirt, “no hands.”
“I’m so proud,” I said flatly.
He surged to his feet. Instinctively, I reached out, my hands avoiding the worst of his burns as I wedged them under his arms, catching him when he stumbled. That left the two of us far too close—close enough for him to murmur directly into my ear.
“Isn’t it about time,” he said softly, his breath a ghost brushing over my cheek, “for another grocery run?” I lowered him back down onto the mattress, anddamn him, he smirked.
“You have my list.”
Chapter 21
I bought him the damn lemons and dumped them on his bed. That didn’t stop my patient from hitting me up for more pills. It didn’t stop him from pushing every button he thought he could get away with pushing.
His burns were improving, day by day—all of them, now.
“What are your thoughts,” he asked me loftily, “on scarred men?”
“Men?” I gave him a look. “If I see any, I’ll let you know.”
Time was measured in paper sculptures—cubes and pyramids, boxes and throwing stars, and little origami birds. He kept folding them, and despite my best efforts to resist, I kept picking up the gauntlet andunfoldingthem. Part of me was expecting another message.Everything hurts.But every sheet of notebook paper that I unfolded was blank.
I kept them in his stolen wallet. In his previous life, my patient hadn’t carried much cash. Besides a single hundred-dollar bill, all I’d found in the larger pockets of his wallet was a small metal token, round and flat, roughly the size and shape of a quarter, with a series of concentric circles etched into the metal.
There was no logical reason for me to start carrying thattoken with me in the pocket of my scrubs, but I did. Days at the hospital, nights at the shack, I carried it with me, and every time my fingers brushed the metal, every single time, I thought,How long until we can move him?
How long until I could forget any of this ever happened? Forget him?
And then, one night, in my apartment, as I defeated yet another one of his folded paper cubes, I smelled something.The barest hint of lemon.
I brought the paper closer to my face to sniff it, then crawled across my bed to hold it closer to the light—closer to my bedside lamp. At first, I saw nothing, but as the page took on heat from the bulb, words appeared.
MINIM.
MURDRUM.
AIBOHPHOBIA.
“Invisible ink,” I said, the way another person might have said an obscenity. “And palindromes.”
“Took you long enough.” Harry somehowknewI’d figured it out before I ever said a word.
“Very funny,” I told him.
