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Show hospital where he helps fix broken bones: bones broken by fallen trees and slammed car doors, on wet or icy streets, bones broken on dark nights, in fights and motorcycle spills and because of old age. Garrett is the cast man. He does not much care for his work. Each day, in a little room off the main corridor of the orthopedics ward, he mixes plaster, lays out gauze bandage, makes sure the saw is sharp, and wonders about Ahmed as he waits for the day to be over. Ahmed has lived at the farmhouse for three months, since Trish moved out. He is a chemist at the University, a graduate student. He is a Turk. He loves his work. Garrett learned these things the day Ahmed moved in, the day he answered Garrett's ad in the local paper. Garrett doesn't know much more about him now. Ahmed rarely speaks. Early each morning Garrett finds him in the living room, cross-legged on the living room couch, reading the Toledo Blade. He takes a full hour over the news, without drink, food, without getting up, farting, or changing position. His expression over what he reads ranges from disapproval to disgust. Occasionally he lets out a small damning groan. But he does not talk. They have sometimes spoken in the evening, some but not much before he returns to his lab at the University where he works late. It is unnerving for Garrett, having this silent Turk in the house where he lived for so long with Trish. Instead of replacing her ghost, as he had hoped, it seems to Garrett that instead he now lives with two of them. |