The branch, the room, the woman
a short story
by GF Michelsen
........................The branch

The days were getting shorter.
He could tell because the shadow of the branch had just started to turn the corner in the wall when the woman came in.
It was her late visit, and he thought -- he was almost certain -- that the branch's tip had stayed shy of the corner until that day.
The seasons and the branch worked opposite from each other. When the days were short, that branch's shade was long; it stretched right across the corner and halfway around the far wall.
When the days were long, and the blunt-knifed shine coming from the window to his right opened all her visits like an oyster, the branch's shadow stayed small. At the height of the light season it barely covered half the wall on his left-hand side, and stayed at least four feet from the corner.
When the door opened for the woman's late visit the next day he checked the shadow once more. It was hard to tell for sure but he thought the portion of twig that had crossed the line of corner was a tiny bit longer than it had been the day before. He marked the spot with his eyes. It was perhaps the width of a finger clear of the corner. He would measure it, from now on, in fingers; in increments of what he thought a finger might represent against the light.
On purpose, for the next three days, he did not check the shadow. He thought that, after such an interval, the shadow would have moved sufficiently that he would know its motion was real, and not something his mind made up to pass the time.
During those three days light came in and flooded the part of the room he could see, and then waned slowly, in a way he could not measure.
In that time he received nine visits from the woman; experienced, nine times, the solitary squeak of the door handle, the more rhythmic creak of the trolley wheels, the oceanic rolling of his body on the mattress.
The cold bed pan, the click of cheap enamel against his front teeth.
On the fourth day he lay tense with anticipation. In all his time in this room he had not noticed the relationship of shadow to the woman's other visits. Even though the early and middle visits perhaps should have stood out more clearly in his memory.
On the early visit she poured him bad coffee, but even the smell of such coffee was strong and solid as a piece of marble in his mind. After the coffee she rattled implements on the medicine tray, as if she hadn't prepared long and carefully for this visit; as if she were not fully aware of how well he knew her habits. Perhaps she wanted to warn him -- every day, she wanted him to get used to the fact that in a few minutes she was going forcibly to open a hole in his skin and pump into his body a half-finger of uncolored poison.
The poison was supposed to kill something bad inside him. It had to be a poison to do what it was supposed to do.
He couldn't remember any more what the bad thing was, but he remembered that much.
On the middle visit she always rearranged the flowers.
This occurred after she fed him and tidied him up, after she straightened the sheets and blankets.
The flowers stood in a vase on the mantelpiece. She walked over there, wiping her hands on her smock; then, opening her hands and fingers wide, she moved in on the vase. Always, just as she was getting ready to touch the stems, her head obscured them from his view. He had a sense that her fingers employed in this task exactly the same motion she used when she looked in the mirror and gave her hair swift little vertical jabs with her fingers, to allow air in among the curls, to lift the whole assemblage.
He had seen her do that to her hair on a middle visit, after the flowers. The mirror was behind the vase, over the mantelpiece. But he never could see her arrange the flowers, because her head was in the way.
On every visit, the bed pan. Always the freezing rub of alcohol, the smell of which stabbed his nose like a needle. The fizz of nylon sheets. Hands that sometimes seemed strong and unyielding as a cargo hook.
She grunted sometimes as she turned him on his side. Sponging him down, she whistled through the crack between her teeth. Perhaps that helped with the smell and offense of what she had to do. Or maybe it was just a habit, a way to make that particular job go more quickly. Or perhaps she liked it. He had no way, no way whatsoever, of knowing.

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Tension January 1997