Chapter 4: Reperfusion

Morning came into Marieke’s room without permission.

Rain had stopped during the night. The window held a pale square of light, and somewhere below, the pipes complained in the wall like an old man clearing his throat. Marieke slept on her side with one hand under her cheek, hair loose across the pillow, mouth softer than I had earned the right to see it. The sheet had slipped from one shoulder. A faint red mark sat low on her hip where my hand had held too firmly and not firmly enough, because with Marieke even certainty seemed to contain an argument.

For a few seconds I let myself look.

Then habit began arranging escape.

Clothes first. Shirt from the floor. Socks near the bed. Shoes by the door. Water glass to the sink. A note, perhaps. Something civil. Something that would let the night remain powerful because morning had not been allowed to make it ordinary. I could have called it kindness if I had needed the lie badly enough. I knew better, which did not mean the body had stopped reaching for the old exits.

“You are thinking very loudly,” Marieke said.

I turned.

Her eyes were still closed.

“I was considering water,” I said.

“You were considering disappearance. Water was only one of the tools.”

“That is an uncharitable reading of hydration.”

She opened one eye. “Do not become charming before coffee. It makes you look guilty.”

“I am not guilty.”

“No.” She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. The sheet moved with her, revealing the line of her collarbone, the curve of one breast, the ordinary intimacy of skin in morning light. She did not cover herself. That made me feel more naked than I was. “Not guilty.”

The words were not forgiveness. They were classification.

I sat on the edge of the bed, my shirt still in my hand. “You are awake.”

“I have been awake for three minutes.”

“And you used those three minutes to accuse me of fleeing.”

“I used those three minutes to observe you preparing a polite exit.” She turned her head toward me. “There is a difference.”

The old answer rose, neat and ready. Something about lectures. Something about not wanting to presume. Something gentle enough to make distance sound like respect.

Marieke watched it reach my face and die there.

“Good,” she said.

“What?”

“You decided not to lie.”

“I decided not to say the first thing.”

“That is sometimes the same thing.”

I put the shirt down. The room smelled of sleep, wine left in glasses, paper, and the remnants of us. It was harder to be solemn in daylight. Night had lent the body mystery. Morning returned objects to their names. Her desk. Her cardigan. Her books. Her mug with two pens in it. My belt twisted near the chair. Her underwear half under the bed. Evidence, not poetry.

“I did not know what morning was supposed to be,” I said.

“No one does. That is why people behave so badly in it.”

That made me smile despite myself.

She sat up, pulling the sheet around her waist now because the air had teeth. Her hair fell forward and she pushed it back impatiently. “I am not asking what we are.”

“That is generous.”

“No. It is precise. People ask that too early when they want the answer to do the work for them.”

“What are you asking?”

“What you do after you are seen.”

The room went still around the sentence.

Marieke waited.

“I don’t know,” I said.

She nodded once, as if the answer had passed a test by failing to impress her.

“Then start there.”

“With not knowing?”

“With not pretending you do.”

Below us, a door closed. Someone moved through the hallway. The building had begun to wake, indifferent to revelations. That helped. The world does not pause just because a man discovers he has been more visible than he intended.

Marieke reached for her shirt and pulled it on. No ceremony, no invitation in the movement, though everything about the room still remembered the night. “There is coffee downstairs around the corner. It is bad, but less bad than the wine.”

“Your standards are heroic.”

“My standards are realistic. Get dressed.”

“Is that an order?”

“Yes.”

I dressed. She did too, with the efficient lack of shyness that suited her. There was a bruise beginning near her hip, a thumbprint becoming colour. She saw me notice.

“I asked for that,” she said.

“I know.”

“You look as if knowing does not help.”

“It helps. It does not absolve.”

Her expression sharpened. “I did not ask to be absolved from my own choices, James.”

The correction landed cleanly.

“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”

She buttoned her trousers, then came over and touched my face once, not tenderly exactly. Deliberately. “Do not make care another way of doubting me.”

I had no answer that did not deserve to be punished, so I nodded.

Outside, Leuven wore the washed look of a city after rain. The stones were dark, the air cold enough to wake the skin, bicycles hissing over wet streets. We walked side by side without touching. That was not distance. It was a kind of discipline. The café around the corner was small and nearly empty, with fogged windows and a man behind the counter who looked personally insulted by morning. Marieke ordered coffee and bread with cheese. I paid before she could object. She objected anyway, but without force.

“You get one,” she said.

“One what?”

“One old-fashioned gesture.”

“I used one last night.”

“Yes. You are now in debt.”

We sat at a table near the window. The coffee was bitter enough to require moral courage. The bread was better. Marieke ate like someone with work ahead and no romantic interest in hunger. I liked that more than I expected.

“I have lab work until seven,” she said. “You have lectures, unless first-year medicine has decided to collapse without you.”

“It might.”

“Then save it. Come by after training tomorrow.”

I looked up from my coffee.

She held my gaze. No softness. No grand declaration. A practical woman putting the next fact on the table.

“After training,” I said.

“You do train tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

“Then after. Not before.”

She turned her cup a slow quarter-turn on the table, squaring it.

“Why not before?”

“Because I want you tired enough to stop arranging yourself for my benefit.”

“That is a cruel plan.”

“That is an efficient plan.”

I laughed, and she looked pleased for half a second before hiding it in her cup.

“One thing,” she said, not softening it. “I don’t stay places long. I never have. You should hear that now, while it costs nothing.” She looked at me then, not to read me for once. To price me.

The morning did not become easy, but it became possible. We spoke about the lecture from the previous night, about reperfusion injury, about the strange arrogance of medical language when confronted with flesh. She explained a mechanism I had only half understood. I asked questions. She corrected me twice and seemed less irritated when I wrote nothing down. When we parted near the corner, she did not kiss me. She looked at me for a moment instead.