One Tuesday night he held the receiver out to me.

“She wants to say hello.” I shook my head and stepped back, and he brought the phone back to his ear and said, evenly, “She said no, Mom,” and I went and opened the refrigerator and looked inside at nothing, and felt, distinctly, like a person whose no had just been carried across a room and set down intact on the other side.

At my next clinic appointment a month later, my father took the whole morning off to come.

The bruise under my arm had faded from purple to a faint yellow.

When Dr.

Shepherd asked whether I could take the brace off without help, I showed him — unbuckled the top strap, unhooked the middle one, lifted the brace away from my chest, and set it back and strapped it down again.