Part 3
Nora drove him the next morning and parked beside the staff entrance. She was thirty-two, an emergency-room nurse, and had inherited Eli’s habit of becoming quieter as a situation grew worse. Before he opened the passenger door, she caught the sleeve of his jacket.
“I’m not calling Dana for you,” she said. “But if you blank in there, say it out loud. Don’t tell them you’re tired.”
Eli looked at the building where he had spent more waking hours than he had at home. “You make it sound easy.”
“I didn’t say easy.” She released his sleeve. “I said that’s the deal if I’m driving.”
He nodded. The truck keys stayed with her.
At Station Four, Tessa wore the radio and carried the tablet. Eli stood six feet behind her on the observer’s side of the yellow line. He could answer a question from there but could not reach a control.
Marlow came in, took one look at Tessa, and searched past her for Eli.
“Morning,” Eli said before he could stop himself.
Tessa waited. Marlow waited too. The old rhythm pulled at Eli: step forward, raise his hand, make the session work. He gripped the brim of his cap instead.
Tessa presented the target. Marlow glanced at it but did not move.
“Give him a second,” Eli said.
“I am.”
Her answer was not disrespectful, which somehow made it harder to hear. Tessa kept the target steady. After a long pause, Marlow touched it and received a piece of pear. She continued with a shoulder presentation, changing the order Eli would have used but not the purpose.
Halfway through, Marlow stopped cooperating. He sat near the mesh and watched Eli with the heavy patience of an animal who could outwait everyone in the building.
“He wants the old order,” Eli said.
“Maybe.” Tessa lowered the target. “Or he wants to know why you’re back there.”
Eli stepped to the yellow line but not across it. He tried to name the cue Tessa should use next. Nothing came. The blankness was small, almost ordinary.
Marlow rose and moved toward Station Four.
Eli felt Tessa look at him. His first instinct was still to disguise the blank as advice.
“I lost the next step,” he said.
Tessa lowered the target. “Then we stop here.”
She gave the all-done cue. Marlow remained at the mesh, watching Eli. Eli kept his feet behind the line. After a long pause, Marlow turned away.
Outside the corridor, Eli sat on an overturned feed bucket while Tessa wiped the target pole. Neither apologized.
“I covered the first two,” Tessa said. “I shouldn’t have.”
“No.”
“You shouldn’t have put me in that position.”
“No.”
“Next time I see it happen, I say so—even if you tell me not to?”
“Especially then,” Eli said.
Tessa set the pole in its rack. “All right.”
During the following week, Tessa ran the sessions while Eli watched. Marlow completed enough of the health-check work for the team to proceed, but never in one smooth sequence. He often stopped to look past Tessa, especially when Eli moved behind the line. Tessa waited without asking him to step in.
On the morning before his final visit, Eli found his spiral notebook beside the tablet. Tessa had marked several entries that conflicted with the current records and left questions in the margins. They spent the first hour sorting out which habits still mattered and which belonged to older routines.
“Tomorrow,” Dana said from the doorway, “you come in as his visitor. No schedule, no work. Then we close the transition period.”
Eli closed the cover and returned it to his pocket. He did not ask for one more working morning…
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