My Husband Let His Wife Push Me From the Balcony

Five weeks after the fall, the hospital gave me a two-hour pass.

My physical therapist said fresh air would help. I could walk now, slowly, with a cane. My left leg was held together with a titanium rod. I took a cab to Marchetti's on Madison. It was the place where Barrett and I used to split tiramisu after studio nights.

I didn't go there for him. I went to prove the city still belonged to me.

I sat in the corner. I ordered soup I couldn't taste.

Then the door opened, and Giselle walked in on Barrett's arm.

She wore pale pink. She saw me right away. Her eyes didn't widen. They didn't even blink. She just smiled and tapped one finger against her thigh. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.

She'd known I would be here.

I reached for my cane. Too late.

A man in a gray hoodie pushed through the front door. His hand came out of his pocket. Steel flashed under the candlelight.

"Wallet! Now!"

He lunged at Barrett. Glasses shattered. Someone screamed.

Giselle moved before Barrett did. She stepped right into the blade. It was neat. Clean. Low on her stomach, just left of center. Like she'd marked the spot in lipstick.

She folded into Barrett's arms with a soft cry.

The man didn't run for the door. He turned and came straight at me.

He grabbed my wrist. His fingers dug into the bracelet.

"Give it."

"No."

I pressed my other hand flat over the emeralds. I pinned them to my skin. He yanked. My shoulder screamed. My bad leg buckled, and I hit the table edge. The clasp bit into my wrist until I felt blood.

I didn't let go.

My grandmother wore this bracelet to her wedding in 1961. She gave it to me on the dock in Seattle. She said, *This is how you find your way home.*

"Let go, lady!"

"You'll have to break my hand."

He looked at me. Something in my face made him hesitate. Then a waiter shouted, and he bolted out the door into the dark.

I sank back into my chair. My wrist was bleeding. Nobody came to my table.

Across the room, Barrett knelt on the floor, holding Giselle. Paramedics rushed past me. They lifted her onto a stretcher. She was crying. Even crying, she looked lovely. Tears like pearls. One hand reaching for him.

Barrett walked beside her all the way out.

He never looked back at my corner.

—

They brought her to my hospital. Same floor. Four doors down.

The next afternoon, I took my cane and walked the hallway for therapy. That was my excuse. Her door was open a hand's width. The whole family was inside. Hezekiah in the chair. Barrett at the bedside. Two aunts I'd met once at Christmas.

Giselle lay back on white pillows. Her fingers were laced over the bandage.

"The doctor said…" Her voice trembled and broke. She waited. Let them lean in. "He said my uterus is too damaged. I can't ever have another baby."

One of the aunts gasped.

"I don't want anything," Giselle whispered. "I'd do it again. I just saw the knife, and I thought, not Barrett. Anything but Barrett."

I watched his face through the gap.

I'd seen it break before. When his diagnosis came. When his mother died. But this was different. It caved in from the center, like a roof with no beams left.

"You saved my life," he said hoarsely.

"Then that's enough for me."

Hezekiah's cane tapped the floor once. "It is not enough for this family."

I walked on before anyone saw me. My leg ached. My wrist throbbed under the gauze.

She hadn't screamed when the knife went in. I kept thinking about that.

—

That night, I couldn't sleep.

I went to the vending machine at the end of the hall. The consult room beside it had a glass panel in the door. The blinds were half drawn. Light leaked out in stripes.

I heard Barrett's voice. Then an older man's. Smooth. Unhurried.

Dr. Julian Ward. I knew him from the Harrison gala. He'd toasted Hezekiah for thirty years of "generous friendship."

"It's experimental," Ward said. "But it's been done. A living donor. Healthy tissue. Young."

"Is it safe?"

"For the recipient? Reasonably."

A long pause. I pressed a coin into the machine. It dropped. Neither of them noticed.

"The donor's already in the building," Ward said. "Her bloodwork is on file. I'd need about three days."

"And the forms?"

"My office handles the forms. They'll say what they need to say."

I waited for Barrett to ask something. *Does she agree? Did you ask her?*

He didn't.

I heard the scratch of a pen. Then his voice, very quiet.

"Book it."

I picked up my water bottle and walked back to my room. I thought they were talking about some stranger. A cousin, maybe. Some poor girl the Harrisons had paid.

I felt sorry for her.

I lay down and turned the bracelet once. Twice. The scab on my wrist pulled tight.

Down the hall, a nurse wrote something on a chart outside my door. She glanced in at me. Then she looked away very fast.

I didn't think about it.

I should have.