Jodi Compton - Sympathy Between Humans

“What-” I said.

“The storm came in,” he said. “The power’s out. I was afraid you’d wake up in a strange place in the dark and not be able to find your way around.”

I sat up, facing him and the end of the bed. “Oh,” I said, and rubbed at my face. “What time is it?”

“Nearly two,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “You should have got me up.”

“Well, you’re awake now. Have you slept enough?”

“Yes,” I said. “I feel a lot better. Can I use your bathroom again?”

Cicero held out the candle. I threw back the comforter and slid down the bed, climbing over the low footboard at the end. Too late it occurred to me to be self-conscious about being half dressed. But Cicero had seen it all before. He was a doctor. I took the candle from him.

In the bathroom, I found toothpaste in Cicero ’s medicine chest. I rubbed some on my tongue and spread it across my teeth and gums, then spit and rinsed my mouth out. I splashed water on my face afterward. The makeshift ritual made me feel like a normal human being again. It helped that my left ear felt better. It was sore, but sore in a way that was far preferable to the pulsing, sharp pain of this afternoon. I chanced looking in the mirror. I’d expected to be bloodshot, but my eyes were surprisingly clear.

I took the candle back into the bedroom. The way Cicero watched me walk was familiar.

“You’re giving me your field sobriety test, aren’t you?” I said.

“I want to be sure you’re okay to drive,” he said. “Sit down and talk to me for a moment. I’m going to tell you two important things.”

I sat on the edge of the bed, and he rolled closer.

“First, I want to see you again in forty-eight hours, to check that your ear is healing properly.”

I nodded assent.

He picked up a slip of paper. “The second thing: this is a prescription for an antibiotic. It’s likely your body can lick this without penicillin, but it’ll do so faster with help.”

“I thought you didn’t prescribe,” I said.

“The pad was brought to me by a patient,” Cicero said. “I didn’t even want to know where she got it. I don’t use it. But I’m making an exception.” He paused, underscoring that this was serious business. “This prescription comes with conditions. First: you tell no one I have a prescription pad here. I never tell people, myself.”

“I won’t,” I said.

“Second, a prescription for antibiotics shouldn’t raise a red flag for the pharmacist. Antibiotics aren’t commonly sought in prescription fraud.”

“You’re saying there’s a chance that, if I go fill this, I could get busted?”

“A very small chance. Usually people who try to fake prescriptions get caught because they don’t know how to write scrips. Doctors and pharmacists communicate with each other in a language all their own. It’s not easy to fake. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with the way this one is written, except that the license number I wrote is completely invalid,” he said. “If they do bust you, they’ll probably go in the back, call the police, and then stall you until the cops arrive.”

What a sordid little story it would make: Hennepin County detective caught scamming prescription drugs.

“So if it takes more than ten minutes for them to find your prescription, if they say they can’t track it down, just leave,” Cicero told me. “But this is the second condition: if you do get caught, this doesn’t come back on me.” He held out the prescription, but just a little, bargaining. “I have enough problems. I do not need to get arrested. If you give me your word you won’t give me up, that’s good enough for me.”

“I give you my word,” I said.

He gave me the slip of paper.

“Why, though?” I asked him. “Why do you trust me?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I just do.”

A silence settled between us. The candlelight flickering on the family photos made the table look like an altar to the spirits of Cicero ’s ancestors, although at least one of the prints was recent: it was Cicero at what must have been his med-school graduation. His smile looked genuine, not the tense rictus some people produce when faced with a camera and a demand to smile. He was easily half a head taller than the people surrounding him.

Half a head taller. He was standing. He was able-bodied.

“How tall were you?” I asked without thinking.

“Were?” he repeated.

Heat immediately rose to my face. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I meant-”

“Six feet,” Cicero said. “The tallest man in my family, ever.”

“I didn’t mean-”

“It’s all right,” he said.

My embarrassment began to recede slightly, but still I looked down at my bare feet. “I should go.”

“Sarah,” he said, “are you afraid to touch me?”

It was true, we were sitting close together, and I had been careful not to let our limbs touch.

“Of course not,” I said. “You examined me, for God’s sake.”

“That was me touching you,” he said. “That’s not the same thing. Does it disturb you that I’m paralyzed?”

“I’m married,” I said.

“I see,” Cicero said quietly. “You wear no wedding ring and are free to stay out until two in the morning, but when I make an overture to you, suddenly you’re married.”

“My husband is in prison,” I said.

He didn’t believe me; I could see that.

“He got sent up for auto theft,” I said. “He’s in prison in Wisconsin.”

Cicero ’s expression didn’t change, but at last he said, “Then I suppose you should go.”

“It’s not because you’re paralyzed,” I said. I don’t know why it was important to me to establish that. I leaned forward and laid a hand on his thigh. It was stupid, a chickenshit half measure.

“I can’t feel that, Sarah,” Cicero said. “You don’t have to do anything to prove to me that you’re open-minded. But if you’re going to touch me, do it somewhere I can feel it.” He reached over and took my hand. “Let me show you something,” he said.

With his other hand, he pulled up his shirt. “A lot of people think a paraplegic’s body has one sharp line between sensation and no sensation, like the line that divides light and dark on the moon,” he said. “But it’s more like the way twilight falls on the earth.”

He placed my hand high on his rib cage. “Here, I can feel everything.” He slid his hand and mine, underneath it, a little lower. “Down here, only temperature, but not pressure. Down here,” a little lower still, “full dark.”

Keeping eye contact, I laid my left hand on the other side of his rib cage, and Cicero put his hands on my hips, pulling me toward him. There was nowhere to go but onto the wheelchair, and cautiously I put my knees on each side of his thighs, on the edges of the seat, so I was kneeling in front of him.

He had no insecurity about having to tip his face upward to kiss a woman, and when he did it, he went deep almost immediately, probing with his tongue. It shocked me; that kind of deep, invasive kiss from a virtual stranger was disturbing and exciting and I felt something roll over deep in my stomach, like nerves, except warmer.

Our dim reflection in the mirrored closet doors showed man, woman, and chair; a sexual tableau I’d never expected to be a part of. Men had taken me into their homes before, and into their beds. But in climbing onto Cicero ’s wheelchair, I was being taken into the very center of his life, almost his body. It made me wonder if Cicero Ruiz had a special insight into how it felt to be penetrated.

The third timeI woke up, the flames of the candles were almost completely recessed in deep pits of wax. It no longer mattered; the sky was lightening to predawn blue beyond the window, just starting to illuminate the bedroom. Cicero slept so close to me that I could feel the warmth of his skin. It was reassuring until I saw Shiloh’s old shirt hanging off the back of Cicero ’s wheelchair, and I felt something cold in my stomach, like I was looking at a map and nothing was familiar.