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He knocks two fingers against the wood beside my shoulder. No question in it. He was eight feet away and he knows exactly what he saw, and I wait anyway, and he does not ask.

Eleven years of that man not asking, and this is the first time I’ve wanted him to, and I hate it.

“You sleeping at home?” I ask him.

Mack looks over at his bag. “Yeah.”

“How is it?”

“Too quiet.”

He bends down for one glove. “She came Tuesday for the last of the boxes.”

“And the lamp?”

“Still there.”

“That lamp?”

“The only lamp.”

“The ugly one with the shade like a hat.”

“The only lamp, Tex.”

I look at him and he gives me half a smile that does not survive the trip.

“Turn it on,” I tell him.

“That your medical advice?”

“Interior design.”

“You’re terrible at both.”

He shoulders his bag, and I almost tell him then. My hand won’t close. Four words.

Instead I reach for my bottle with the right hand and he walks away, and my left hand closes fine after he’s gone.

Six days later Astrid puts both my hands palm down on the treatment table.

Friday. Final assessment. The words have been in my calendar long enough to stop looking like words.

She checks the right shoulder first, the way she always does, and I know where she’ll stand before she gets there and she knows I am about to compensate before I do it. Most days that feels like progress.

Then she taps two fingers against the back of my left hand.

“Any numbness or tingling in either hand?”

“No.”

The answer’s out before she’s finished the question.

Saturday that hand failed on Brick in front of the room. Today every fingertip can feel the paper underneath it.

Astrid watches my face a moment longer than the question needs. I do not give her anything new to read.

“Any weakness?”