She said: I checked.
I said: you checked while we were talking.
She said: I’m a surgeon. I multitask.
I sat with the phone for a moment.
I thought about the hallway.
I thought about the temperature of it.
I thought about sitting in the cafeteria and doing the calculation.
I thought about twenty years.
I thought about two hundred and forty members.
I thought about the specific person I had become in the time since I last
saw any of those people.
I thought about what showing up would mean.
Not for them.
For me.
Alison said: I’ll come with you.
I said: you don’t have to.
She said: I know I don’t have to. I want to.
She said: I wasn’t invited either, by the way.
I said: you weren’t?
She said: I think I fell off the list around the same time you did.
