I shifted my feet. Snow crunched beneath my boots. I dropped to a squat beside the body. It was a woman. Her long pink scark was wrapped tightly around her neck. Too tight to let air pass. I pulled off my gloves and held my fingers to the side of her neck. Cold and stiff.
Across the lawn they come, the doctors, in a small group, laughing and talking together and, amazing thing, the central figure, a tall man in a white shirt with an open collar, stops, and a tear rolls down his left cheek, then a second. He holds up his hands to mask his face. There is a word to describe this kind of waiting, but I can’t remember it, only the shape, like the double curve a child draws to suggest a bird in flight. The other word, the writing-journey word, is more alive, closer but still elusive. The doctor’s hands meet in prayer, in front of his throat.
