He nodded. There wasn't anything else to do. He sat there with it and let it be true.
"I've been angry at you for seven months," he said. "And it's been easier than this."
"I know. I've been angry at you, too."
"I don't know how to fix it. I don't know if it gets fixed."
"Neither do I."
"But I know when they're discharging you."
She looked at him.
"It's on the paper," he said. "Tomorrow. Before noon. You must have a support person to drive you home." He folded the paper once, along one of Rosie's soft gray creases. "Marisol's got to work Monday. She's got a three-hour drive home tonight and she's been here since four in the morning. I'm here. I've got the truck. The back seat folds down flat, you can lie on your side. I'll call the yard and tell them I'm off Monday. And Tuesday."
"Tom, you'll have to stop every hour. I'm supposed to get out and walk."
"Then we'll stop every hour."
"Over the pass. In February."
"I've been over the pass in February before."
Something in her face moved. Not forgiveness, not yet—he didn't expect that, and he didn't think he'd earned it, and he wasn't sure, sitting there, that forgiveness was even the right word for what they needed. But something. A door that had been shut, not open, just unlatched.
"Okay," Lena said.
In the reclining chair, Rosie sighed in her sleep and rolled over, and the purple elastic slid the rest of the way out of her hair and fell on the floor.
Lena looked at it. Then at Tom.
"Bring her here," she said. "Gently. Sit her on the edge where I can reach."
He did. Rosie barely woke; she leaned against his chest with her eyes closed while he sat on the edge of the bed. Lena couldn't sit up. She couldn't raise her arms more than a few inches without her face going white. So she reached out with the hand that didn't have the IV in it, and put it over his hand, and guided his fingers into their daughter's tangled hair.
"Three pieces," she said quietly. "Take the one on the right and cross it over the middle. Now pick up a little more from the side—no, less than that. Less. Good. Now the left one over. Keep it tight. Keep your hands close to her head. That's where you went wrong before. You hold it too far away."
"I hold it too far away," Tom said.
"You do. Get in close. It's not going to break."
He got in close. Over, and pick up, and over. His fingers were thick and clumsy and smelled faintly of creosote no matter how hard he scrubbed them, and Lena's hand stayed on top of his the whole way down, light, correcting. When they got to the end, she let go, and he tied it off with the purple elastic himself.