Chapter 14: The First Bad Choice

Saar’s hand stopped on the table.

That was the first thing I saw after the sentence left me.

The marker was still in my hand. Blue ink had gathered at the tip, too much pressure held too long against the air. Behind me, the diagram on the board waited with its arrows and neat labels, pretending that anything drawn clearly had become less dangerous.

Mathis did not answer.

He looked down at his notes. His ears had gone red, then the back of his neck. Around him, fourteen tired students discovered sudden interest in their own pages. Someone shifted a chair. The radiator clicked in the corner. A waffle broke under someone’s hand with a small dry sound.

I could have softened it then.

I knew the available phrases. I had spent a lifetime learning how to clean damage while the damage was still warm. I am tired. That came out wrong. Let us try again. You do know it. Walk me through it. Each sentence stood ready, orderly and late.

I said none of them.

Because part of me still wanted him to stop needing me.

Saar looked at me once. She did not rescue him. She did not rescue me either. Her hand stayed flat on the table for another second, then she picked up her pen and set it down beside the bread she had brought. The movement was small enough to be ordinary if you were not watching for mercy.

“All right,” she said. “We are done for tonight.”

A few students looked relieved enough to hate themselves for it. Chairs scraped. Coats came off chair backs. Pages were gathered too carefully. Elise returned from the corridor with Lotte, saw the room, and stopped in the doorway.

“What happened?” she asked.

“Session ended,” Saar said.

Elise looked at Mathis. He had closed his notebook. His hands were on top of it, fingers pressed together so tightly the knuckles had gone pale.

“Mathis,” I said.

He stood before I could make his name useful.

“I have to go,” he said.

His voice was ordinary. It landed worse than anger would have.

He put his notes into his bag. One sheet caught at the corner and bent. He fixed it with too much care. Nobody spoke while he did it. I wanted to tell the room to stop watching him, but I had made the watching happen.

Mathis left without looking at me.

The door closed with a soft click.

After that, everyone moved faster. The room emptied around me. Someone thanked me by habit and looked embarrassed as soon as the words were out. Lotte carried the remaining waffles in the wrong box. Elise collected abandoned pens and put them in a straight line beside the board, as if straightening one small thing might help.

When only Saar remained, she stood, wound her scarf around her neck, and looked at the diagram behind me.

“Erase the board,” she said.

“What?”

“Erase it. They should not have to come back to that tomorrow.”

I turned and wiped away Frank-Starling, preload, stroke volume, compensation. The blue ink smeared before it disappeared. My hand had begun to ache.

Saar waited until the board was blank.

Then she said, “You made yourself necessary. Then punished him for needing you.”

The sentence did not raise its voice. It did not need to.

“He did know it,” I said.

“Yes.”

“He has known it for two weeks.”

“Yes.”

“He needs confidence, not another explanation.”

“I get it.”

Saar put the bread back into its paper. “Truth is not a clean tool just because it is true.”

I looked at the blank board.

“Are you going to say that to him?” she asked.

“I tried.”

“No. You tried to make him ashamed enough to become independent.”

There were answers to that too. Better ones than I deserved. That the exam was close. That dependency would fail him when I was not in the room. That a doctor had to know when reassurance became anaesthetic. That fear had to be trained out, not fed. All of them were arguments for a better man than the one who had spoken.

“I know,” I said.

Saar watched me. “You like that sentence.”

“Which one?”

“I know.”

I looked at her.

“It makes you sound sorry without changing anything,” she said.

She said it like someone naming a loose wire.

Then she picked up her bag.

“Find him tomorrow,” she said. “Do not ambush him tonight because you want to sleep better.”

She left me with the blank board and the smell of sugar, wool, and marker ink.

I slept three hours and woke before the alarm.

The room was dark except for the grey seam around the curtain. My body lay still with the trained obedience of a man who knew movement would admit the day had begun. Somewhere in the house, a pipe knocked twice. In the first months in Leuven, the small sounds of other people had comforted me. No father’s newspaper. No kitchen weather. No house waiting for me to fail quietly inside it.

That morning, the ordinary sounds seemed to belong to a building that had not yet decided whether to let me stay.

I reached for the notebook and stopped before opening it.

Study would get its number. Road had not happened. Strength would happen if I forced it. Food had become something other people had to remind me about. Sleep had failed before I had written it down. Money sat elsewhere now, in files and signatures and a future that had my name on paper.

Want stayed closed under the cover.

I dressed for the physiology exam with unnecessary care. Clean shirt. Dark sweater. The good coat, brushed at the shoulders. Shoes cleaned the night before because I had needed a task that did not speak back. In the mirror, the young face looked older when tired. The skin was still young. The eyes were still before they knew what the stillness was worth.