I walk away from the ward and I do not look back.
That is the thing I am most certain of in this moment — I do not look back, because looking back would mean seeing her standing in that doorway in my coat with her bandaged hands and her flat steady voice saying please leave the corridor, and I have already seen that and I do not need to see it again. The image is already somewhere it will not easily leave.
I walk to the east study.
It is the room I go to when I need to think without being interrupted — windowless on three sides, heavy door, the kind of room that holds silence deliberately. I have made most of the important decisions of my adult life in this room. I stand in the middle of it now and I do not sit and I do not light additional lamps and I simply stand in the low light and I think.
I had the right.
