Characters, settings, et cetera, are the properties of their respective owners, who are not me. This story is the sequel to The Ten Millionth Time.
She only opens the door because of the sound of wood impacting wood. There is only one who would make that sound, and by fortunate circumstance he is the only person she is willing to see.
The memory of the piano is all that keeps her going, sometimes. When the bruises and the trauma and the pain become too much, it is all that keeps her going. All that keeps her from toppling off the roof of the hospital.
The door creaks a little when she opens it. He holds his cane in one hand and his coat in the other, and he steps up beside her only a little awkwardly, and drapes his coat around her shoulders. Then, with his hand on her back, he guides her gently outside.
He does not say a word.
Against all odds, against all reason, she trusts him. Perhaps it is because of the piano.
She notices with her usual, now-usual, detachment, that he brought his car. She is not used to him being thoughtful. She does not think he is either. He opens the door for her; she does not complain about his sudden chivalry.
There is pain in his eyes when he sees the way she curls up in the seat, almost instinctively covering herself, but he does not want her to see it, so she does not. Instead she watches him start the car. The stereo flickers to life, playing a CD of the music of some old classical composer, dead now two or three or four hundred years. She expected jazz, but the slow violins and the melancholy notes from the wind section do fit the mood better.
She does not realize she has dozed off until she wakes up to see him sliding back into the car. She thinks this is the first time she has woken up without screaming and thrashing about in days. She thinks this is the first time she has not dreamed in days. She thinks this is the first time she has slept in days. By the time she has the presence of mind to look about, they have already pulled out of the little mall.
He does not say anything, and she does not say anything, and they drive along in a blissful fifteen minutes of slow violins and melancholy notes from the wind section. When he helps her out of the car, his tenderness stuns her. This is more than she had dreamed was behind the facade.
She doesn't remember quite what happens next, except that it ends with her sitting back in his favorite seat. There's Chinese on the table, and she thinks it's funny that he's served himself the fried rice and her the orange beef, but not funny enough to violate the moment, the beautiful moment.
She wakes up, and she's not sure how much later it is. She doesn't remember a blanket covering her when she fell asleep, but then she doesn't remember falling asleep either. She doesn't remember him camped out, asleep, on the couch.
She remembers the slow violins and the melancholy notes from the wind section.
She stands up and slips the jacket off of her shoulders, and she only permits herself one last look at his sleeping form before she walks out silently.
But she does not see that he watches her leave.
