The fog had left in its wake a cloudless sky and a gusting wind that threw the leaves into perpetual frenzy. Emma tripped through the clean air, winding from house to hospital and back, fighting an almost constant urge to cover her eyes, retreat back into fog, see nothing clearly. She succeeded mostly, a walking, winding body, tending, going, feeding, nodding, until nine days and nights had passed and Roland was brought home. She woke up then. She saw Roland sitting in the old nursing chair without most of his left leg, and the doctor kneeling before him, showing Emma how to clean and wrap the stump. She saw herself in the kitchen doorway, Joshua in her arms, her face worked into the easiest expression she could manage, though she was close to vomiting with what was in front of her: black stitching holding together a nearly unrecognizable, swollen, shining, ham-pink remainder of a leg. “Like this,” said the doctor. “Then this.” He was done with the alcohol—he was drawing small circles on the flesh with a wad of linen.
