If someone broke in now, they would think they had been beaten to this house by another criminal. I might invite them inside and ask for their help: thieves are good at finding valuable things. I have ransacked each room so thoroughly that the floor has been resurfaced, clothes and doodahs rising from it like molehills. How is it that things grow legs in the night? I must have put the thermometer down on the nightstand because I always do before bed. I take it out of the pocket of my jacket or jeans or fleece and I put it there, ready for when I wake up. This morning, it was elsewhere, and it hadn’t left a note, so I do not know where elsewhere is.
I flinch as my phone leaps between two notes.
“Stop calling, stop calling,” I jitter in my limbs as it rings out. I am not going in to work. Doesn’t he realise this is an emergency?
I check the text I sent has been delivered: Not coming in. Lost the thermometer.
I lower my eyes the short distance to his reply: Buy a new one.
Rage replenishes in my gut. A new thermometer wouldn’t have her temperature recorded somewhere in its electric brain. A new thermometer wouldn’t have ever touched her and won’t ever be able to touch her. Does he have a plan for that too? Can he rewind time? If he can, he could do the decent thing and travel further back and force me to take her to the hospital sooner.
“Hang up on the doctor,” he could say. “The doctor cannot see her colour drooping. The doctor cannot see what a mother can.”
I reply: I quit.
I begin putting the clothes back in the drawers, working backwards.
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