"Forty percent?"
"It just goes. It doesn't matter what it says. It says forty and then it's black." He pressed the plug harder. The screen flickered and lit and the battery icon came up with a single red sliver in it, and then it went dark again. He made a sound in his throat. "Come on," he said, to the phone, very quietly. "Come on, come on."
I put the bag down on the table behind him. I don't think he saw it. I thought, he's like that about it. Look at him. He's like that.
"Kel, it's a phone," I said. "It's not a person."
He didn't answer. After a minute the screen came on and stayed on, and the sliver of red stayed, and he let out a breath and took the blue sock out of his jacket pocket and wrapped it around the cord and the base of the phone, carefully, the way you'd bandage something, and propped it against the toaster. Then he turned around and saw the bag.
I watched him see it. I watched him read the name of the store on the side.
"Is that Juni's?" he said.
"Yes."
He nodded. He looked at it for a long second. And then he said, "Good," and he meant it. I swear to you he meant it. His face did something I hadn't seen it do in a long time: it loosened. "Good," he said again. "What kind?"
"An iPhone. The nurse said they're the most reliable."
"That's good," he said. "That's really good. Did they set up the app already? You have to do the app before the old sensor stops talking to the old phone or you lose like two hours of data. I mean — I think. I read that."
"You read that?"