At first Adaire thought he kissed the swelling because he wanted her to stop being ashamed of it. Nobody else had touched that side of her body except to examine, measure or mark it. Venn rested his mouth there as though it were the place he had been searching for.
She had met him outside the hospital, beneath the little shelter where patients waited for lifts. He had no umbrella and did not seem to notice the rain running down his face. She offered him space beneath hers. By the time her taxi arrived, they were talking about the closed cinema on Briar Street, where both claimed to have seen their first frightening film.
Later she could not remember him naming the film.
He was good at letting her talk. After months of being interrupted by appointments and careful questions, she found this almost unbearably attractive. He listened to stories about work. He admired the crooked shelves she had put up herself. When she was tired, he stayed without demanding to be entertained.
He always sat on the same side of her.
The operation was scheduled for Thursday. She told him over supper. He had been watching her through the steam rising from the plates, smiling in a private way she had begun to think belonged to them.
"Will they take all of it?" he asked.
"They hope so."
The smile vanished.
Adaire began explaining the possibilities, the things she had been told would depend on what they found. He interrupted her for the first time.
"You can't let them."
She put down her fork.
He apologized. He said he was frightened of losing what they had. She had wanted somebody to say that for so long that she accepted the wrong meaning inside the right words.
Two nights later she woke with his mouth against her skin.
His jaw was open far beyond the limit of a human joint. She could see the hinge moving beneath his ear, stretching without breaking. The open mouth covered the swelling completely. Inside it, something narrow and pale moved in time with his breath.
It was breathing into her.
Adaire tried to sit up. Venn held her down with one hand, gently enough to suggest that gentleness was all he believed the situation required. The pale thing pressed through her skin without opening it. She felt a deep pulse, separate from her heartbeat, answer the pressure.
She struck him with the bedside lamp. His jaw closed with a soft click. He looked hurt.
"I was helping."
"Helping what?"
He placed his palm over the swelling, and the tenderness in his face made her feel colder than the impossible mouth had.
She understood that he was looking at someone else.
Venn said it was beautiful. He had never seen one growing quite that way. He spoke with the care of a man trying to explain why a piece of music mattered to him. Adaire asked whether he had ever wanted her. He seemed confused by the question, then glanced over the rest of her body as if noticing the amount of packaging around a gift.
She went to the door. He caught her arm and turned her back toward the bed.
"You'll frighten it."
She shouted her neighbor's name. It was the least elegant thing she had ever shouted, a repeated bark of sound that hurt her throat. The neighbor came into the hall carrying a saucepan because she had been cooking. Venn released Adaire when she opened the door, and Adaire passed her without stopping to find shoes.
She spent the night in the neighbor's spare room. In the morning she called the hospital and asked them not to admit Venn. She did not try to describe his mouth. She described what he had done with his hands. That was enough for the person taking the call to understand why she was afraid.
The operation went ahead. When Adaire woke, part of her body was gone and the room was full of ordinary voices explaining ordinary needs. She was grateful for every practical question. Did she want the bed raised? Was the water within reach?
That evening she saw Venn beyond the glass panel in her door.
He held a sealed specimen container against his chest. The hand around it was too long, its fingers still drawing back through a gap too narrow for them. Somewhere farther down the corridor, a member of staff shouted for help.
Venn did not look toward Adaire. He was murmuring the private name he had used for her in bed. The thing in the container moved toward his mouth, slowly opening within its surrounding fluid.
Adaire pressed the call button. Before anyone reached the room, Venn passed out of sight with the container tucked inside his coat.
Her neighbor arrived the next morning with a clean nightdress. She asked whether Adaire wanted company. Adaire said yes, then began crying so hard that the woman had to put the bag down and hold the water cup against her hands.
