The sound of someone moving through the world a little faster than they had planned. She boarded at 6:21. 2 minutes late. And she looked wrong. Not sick exactly, not injured, but hollowed like something had been quietly removed from behind her eyes while she was gone.
She sat beside him without a word. Marcus waited 30 seconds, a minute, Emily. She was staring straight ahead. I'm okay. I didn't ask.
She looked at him, then sharp, a flicker of something, and then slower. Right, you didn't. She exhaled. My dad is sick. Marcus, let that land.
How sick. She was quiet for a moment. The train moved. the kind where they stop telling you about treatments and start talking about comfort. Her voice was steady, but her hands weren't. He caught the slight tremor before she locked her fingers together.
I've been at the hospital every morning before work, which is why I'm always on this train, which is why she stopped. Which is why you were always tired, Marcus said. Yeah. She looked down at her hands. I've been doing the smile thing.
The I'm fine, I can handle it thing. You probably know that thing. I know that thing. It's exhausting. It is.
He said, "It really genuinely is." Something about hearing him say it. Not as a platitude, not as sympathy, but as a man who had lived inside that exhaustion and knew its exact texture made Emily's composure slip just slightly, just enough. Her jaw tightened. She pressed her lips together and breathed very carefully through her nose for a moment. Marcus didn't offer a hug. didn't say it's going to be okay.
He had heard that enough times to know how little it meant when someone actually needed at least. Instead, he said, "Tell me about him." She looked up. "What? Your dad? Tell me about him.
What's he like?" For a moment, she seemed confused by the question. Like it wasn't what she'd been bracing for. Then something in her shoulders came down an inch. "He's stubborn," she said. Like embarrassingly stubborn.
"He still argues with the TV. News, sports, doesn't matter. He'll be lying in a hospital bed and he'll point at the screen and go, "That man doesn't know what he's talking about." Marcus smiled. A real one. What does he watch?