#i took a phys ed class in college that was literally all education

[statusquoergo]

“Come on.”

“Uh?”

Diane looks up as Naomi stands and holds out her hand as if this isn't a ridiculously careless thing she's asking her to do, as if neither of them has the good sense to mention that neither one of them has any idea what they're getting themselves into. As if neither of them might be walking straight into a trap of their own making, or nothing much will change at all and they'll forget about each other in a month, or a few days. As if it's a risk worth taking to find out which.

As if there's anything else to do today.

“I'm not going to the hospital.”

“I know.” Naomi reaches a little closer. “I have a first aid kit at home.”

Enough to get them through, that's all. Enough for now.

“You know how to wrap it?” Diane asks as she takes Naomi's hand to pull herself up, as though the answer might change her mind somehow. Naomi smiles a little, as though she knows it just as well that it won't.

“Yeah.” She sets Diane's hand down on her shoulder. “It's not far, come on. I'll carry you down the stairs.”

“You'll drop me.”

“I will not.” Naomi urges her forward, along the concrete path out of the park. “I mean I'm just offering, I don't have to.”

It's a nice gesture, though, isn't it? It was a nice thought.

They walk slowly down the street, stepping more or less in sync past the general store with the baking supplies just past the doorway, turning at the corner to walk toward the coin laundry that's open even at three in the morning and also on holidays. A hand-drawn poster in the window of the discount shoe store across the street loudly advertises VACUUMS REFURBISHED while a Times New Roman printout on the telephone cubicle in the middle of the block offers “suitable compensation” in exchange for willing test subjects, No Questions Please; a few steps farther along stands an apartment building that somehow looks like it's missing a couple of stories, and Diane shifts her weight to her good leg as Naomi steps away to fumble with the lock on the front door.

“It's the door on the left,” Naomi says, the door sticking only slightly as she shoves it open. “When you get to the basement.”

She opens the first door on the right, a stairwell that only leads down.

“Upstairs is that door over there, but I don't know any of the neighbors, so. I'm not gonna introduce you to anyone.”

That's fine. Diane doesn't want to know any of them, either.

Naomi walks down the stairs first and doesn't try to carry her.

“Bathroom's at the end of the hall,” she says. “The taps aren't broken, the water's just cold when it's cold outside and warm when it isn't, but if you let it run for a little while, it'll...fix itself. And make sure you don't touch the water heater, it's metal and it gets really hot sometimes.”

Diane clutches the wooden banister nailed to the wall as she limps her way down and wonders how much of all this she's supposed to remember. All of it, probably. It isn't very complicated.

Naomi unlocks the door on the left and holds it open.

“You can sit on the bed.”

It's good of her to offer. It isn't much of a bed, really, more of a mattress pushed into the corner, but that isn't exactly a surprise, and it's good of her to offer all the same.

“Thanks,” Diane says, a little too late to seem quite natural. Naomi hums a disinterested acknowledgment and doesn't seem to mind.

“Take off your shoes.”

Diane promptly unties her sneakers, placing them on the floor beside the bed as Naomi kneels in front of her with a roll of ACE bandage in her hand and her eyes focused on Diane's ankle like she's the only attending physician in the entire complex who doesn't have better things to do with her time than tend to something as trivial as all this. Diane should count herself lucky the timing worked out the way that it did.

Lucky, was it? It's about time.

The single bulb in the overhead light flickers a little as if a public execution has just disrupted the power grid, or someone's turned on too many air conditioners at once and blown a fuse a few floors up.

“Don't worry about it,” Naomi says. Diane doesn't bother to assure her that she wasn't.