Keep This Quiet: A number written inside a splint

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Monday. The kitchen, nine in the morning.

The blue car came at nine. Nobody had rung for it. Nobody ever needed to.

He took the chair where the light was good. This time the bag went on the table, where he opened it. It was the second time she had seen inside. Rolled gauze, tape, a small pair of scissors with rounded ends.

"Show me your hands," the doctor said, kindly.

She gave him the wrong one first. He turned it over with one finger. "Cold." Then he took the other by the wrist, the way her husband had. He looked at two fingers for as long as it takes to read a line.

"A door, I'm told."

"Someone pulled it shut."

"Mm." He did not ask who. He bound one finger to its neighbor with the economy of a man who had bound this family before.

He asked his four questions while he worked, in their order. Sleeping. Down before noon. The hands he could see for himself.

At the fourth he looked up.

"Any visitors?"

"One. At the foot of my bed."

"Mm." He smoothed the tape flat with his thumb. "At that hour, Mrs Ashford, most people only think so."

He said it kindly. That was the whole of its weight.

"Doors in this house," he said. "You'll rest it. No stairs you can do without."