Evelyn rocked to her feet and tossed the book aside. “Let’s do it. No curry, though.”
I pouted but promised, “No curry.”
For the rest of the afternoon and evening, Evelyn and I experimented with how much help she needed from me. Cooking and cleaning were pretty much my sole responsibilities. Evelyn kept her place spotless, but with one arm down for the count, she couldn’t wield a broom or spray cleaner as often as she liked. Grocery shopping also landed on my to-do list. Though Evelyn was happy to tag along, reaching for things on the top shelf or kneeling down to grab something from the bottom made her woozy. The painkillers for her shoulder were no joke. Furthermore, Evelyn had inherited the Irish habit of inhaling meat and potatoes on the nights she didn’t order takeaway curries. Variety was a new concept for her.
“What’s that?” she asked every time I placed something new in the cart. In London, you had to pay twenty pence for a shopping cart, or a buggy as Evelyn called it. Additionally, you had to bring your own bags to load your items or pay for ones from the store. Evelyn’s pockets jangled with “just in case” change. She always forgot her bags.
“Sun-dried tomatoes.”
“What’s that?”
“Fresh oregano.”
“What’s that?”
“Have you ever been to a grocery store?” I retorted as I dropped a bushel of bananas into the buggy.
Evelyn grinned. “I was kidding about the bananas. Are we almost done? It’s getting late, and my arm’s starting to ache.”
As I cooked dinner, I set Evelyn to tasks she could accomplish. She washed tomatoes while I chopped garlic and herbs for a fresh marinara sauce. She set the counter with plates and utensils and a single wineglass for me.
“I’m not supposed to drink,” she explained when I lifted a quizzical eyebrow. “Bad to mix painkillers and alcohol.”
While I worked, I kept an eye on Evelyn, noting the recent changes in her manner. She didn’t baby her shoulder. Rather, she seemed to forget she was injured, often reaching for something with her left hand before remembering that it was immobilized by the brace. Each time it happened, she visibly winced. That was the biggest tell of her injury’s severity. Evelyn rarely responded to pain. Once, she’d broken her wrist during a game of field hockey in school. Another girl had swung the stick directly into her arm, but Evelyn carried on playing. Not until after her team had won the game did she bring the swollen limb to a medic’s attention. Paper cuts and everyday bruises went unnoticed by her. She had a superhuman tolerance for pain. Because she was so used to taking care of herself, asking for and accepting help had always been a weak point of hers.
“Can you…?” She trailed off, staring hopelessly at her plate of spaghetti. The spoon lay off to the side, useless. She couldn’t spin the noodles around her fork without it.
“Ah, sorry.” I picked up a forkful for her. “I should’ve made penne or something. Here, try like this.” I dumped her meal into a bowl instead and showed her how to twirl the fork one-handed against the side of the container. She got the hang of it quickly, and her slight frustration wore off when she became independent again.
“How long ago were you injured?” I asked.
“Almost a week,” she answered. “I’ve been stuck inside ever since. They don’t want me back until I’m fully healed.”
“You must be bored out of your mind.”
“You have no idea. Please, Jack.” She set her big gray-blue eyes against mine and pouted. “You’ve gotta get me out of this flat. If I spend one more day here, I’ll lose my head.”
I couldn’t help but grin, though I knew my teeth must be full of herbs and tomato bits. “Oh, I have plenty of plans to keep us entertained. I intend to convince anyone in our vicinity that we are tourists through and through. You better get a good night’s sleep tonight.”
Before we could drift off to bed, we had to get through a few more challenges. One of them was that Evelyn hadn’t had a proper bath since her injury. She’d been wiping the parts of herself she could reach with a soapy washcloth, which did the trick temporarily but didn’t count as a real bath. I drew her a bath that night. While the water warmed up, I turned my attention to the complicated array of buckles that secured Evelyn’s brace to her shoulder.
“Pull there, yeah,” she instructed as I fiddled with the straps. “That goes under. There ya go. Lift it off. Gently!”
I unwrapped the black polyester from her arm and, as carefully as possible, maneuvered it away from her arm. Halfway off, the brace got a bit stuck, and I accidentally pulled her shoulder. Her face scrunched up, and a small squeak made its way past her tightened lips.
“Sorry!” I set the brace aside and returned to her hastily, checking the shoulder for damage. “Are you okay? Did I dislocate it again?”
Surprisingly, she laughed. “You can’t even do a single pull-up, Jack. I don’t think you could pull my arm out of place. You jostled it, that’s all.” With her good arm, she pulled up the hem of her T-shirt, revealing a set of eight-pack abs Thor would have envied. “Can you get this off me? I can do it myself, but it hurts.”
With extra care, I pulled the shirt off. “I don’t know how you did this yourself the past few days.”
“I’ve only changed once.”
“So that’s where the smell is coming from.”
She aimed a weak jab at my stomach. I let it land, knowing she would never unleash her full punching potential on me, and examined her bare shoulder. There were two small incisions as a result
