At the clinic, Eli helped clear a path for a cupboard to move six inches to the left.
Leah stood in the doorway directing a porter and the nurse who would cover Tessa’s sessions. Eli held the door and moved the empty chair clear. The cupboard scraped the floor, stopped on a loose tile and finally settled against the wall; the porter took the resistance while Eli kept his hands off the load. In its old position it had prevented a chair from turning fully toward the examination couch. No one had noticed until the new nurse tried to bring a patient through the room using the chair rather than leaving it outside.
“There,” Leah said. “Now we can stop asking people to squeeze.”
Eli straightened. His phone lay on the windowsill with Mira’s message still open.
Tessa came in carrying the handover folder. She took one look at the shifted cupboard and asked why they had not done that months ago.
“Because you put the cupboard there,” Leah said.
“I did, didn’t I?”
They tried the chair again. The new nurse, whose name was Irena, turned it without striking the couch. She asked where the spare cuff was kept. Tessa opened the drawer, found tape instead, and stood looking at it.
