Page 63 of The Savage

There’s a chair by his bed that has learned the weight of my doubt.

There’s a bowl he refuses to eat from unless I feed him.

And most disgustingly, there’s a look we share when the doctor speaks too gently or the nurse too loudly, a look that says this is ours even when nothing is.

What does that say about a woman about to promise herself to God?

Nothing good. Nothing simple.

Footsteps in the corridor snap me out of the spiral. I grasp the interruption with shameful relief, and I stand, too quickly, hands folded as if recital will save me. A firm knock, once after a low exchange between my guards; I’ve learned their cadence. The door opens and the taller one steps in, the other behind like a shadow.

‘Time to go, Sister,’ he says, not unkindly.

‘Go?’ I rise before I remember to hesitate. ‘Back to Ren— to him? The patient’s room?’ I ask breathlessly, before I can stop myself.

A flicker in his eyes, pity, maybe. ‘Yes. That’s where we’re going.’

My heart leaps like a bird freed from a tangled wire.

Relief. The word arrives and brings its friends – elation, steadiness, the dizzy lift of a bird forgetting it ever learned to fear the sky.

It’s so wrong to feel this way. So wrong and yet…

I smooth my habit, buy myself a second with the small ritual, but my feet are already pushing against my will, hurrying out the door.

The other guard steps aside to let me pass.

My steps whisper on the polished floor and I try to pray as we go. Nothing fancy or even dramatic. Just the short, stubborn kind.

Help me. Help me. Help me.

At the turn near the nurses’ station, I slow. ‘May I use your phone?’ I ask, hating the crack in my voice. I have no idea what the convent number is but surely someone will know?

The guards freeze, then exchange fearsome looks with the nurses. ‘Not without the boss’s permission.’

‘Okay. Then tell me, has… has anyone called? Asked after me?’

A beat. The smallest shake of her head. ‘We don’t know. Maybe Dr Conti might know.’

We don’t know.

It is worse than no. It is the same blank left in my head, the same unmarked door at the end of every dream. A hollowness God is not filling.

I bite the inside of my cheek until the taste of iron gives me something that feels like certainty.

We reach the familiar door flanked by more guards.

One of my escorts knocks once, then again in a pattern I’ve learned. A click, a whisper of mechanics, and they open.

His room is lighter now with curtains drawn for morning. He looks just as I left him… maybe even better. Sharp eyed with no signs of the sedation he insisted on. A storm organised into a map.

When his eyes find me, the ache and weight of it is a physical thing.

As is the savage determination in his face when he holds out his hand, imperious, palm up, implacable. ‘Come here, angel.’

My feet move again, independent of my thought or will.

My hand shakes when I raise it. Shakes harder when he drops the rosary into my open palm and closes his fist over it, binding us once more.