Chapter 14: Handwriting (Part 2) - Multimedia

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Chapter 14: Handwriting (Part Two)

David shut the office door behind him and made his way silently to his desk. He had a pounding headache now. The sound of his own raised voice, yelling at Ginger, reverberated inside his skull. He closed his eyes with a groan and slowly massaged his temples with his fingertips.

"It's just - the handwriting is a little hard to make out," she'd said. That was all it took to set him off. One perfectly innocent comment. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly true. In the two years that Penny had worked for him, he couldn't even count the number of times he'd teased her about her handwriting.

David's mouth curved into an expression halfway between a smile and a wince as he remembered one time. Not the first time, and certainly not the last. His first evening back in his own apartment, the day the hospital released him. Penny had been the one to escort him home and help him ease himself into his own bed. She'd bustled around the room, drawing blinds and switching off lamps, as he'd reclined against the pillows and scanned his eyes across the handwriting on a pink 3x5 notecard.

"Penny, am I supposed to be able to read this?"

He'd glanced up at her. She'd crossed her arms in front of her chest and scowled. "Maybe if you stare at it long enough, it'll come to you."

He nodded vaguely and rotated the card so that he was looking at the writing upside down. "Oh I get it," he murmured. "This is one of those inkblot tests they give you to test if you're insane, right?"

"A Rorschach test? Yes, David. It's a Rorschach test."

He'd squinted at the card. "I see two butterflies and a unicorn."

He'd been exaggerating of course. He could read her handwriting well enough, but he'd pretended to struggle that night. He could see she was getting ready to head out. It would be his first night on his own after the long weeks spent convalescing at Mount Sinai. She'd carefully laid out all the supplies he would need on his bedside table: a glass of water, a bedtime snack, the TV remote, his cell phone plugged into its charger, and that single pink notecard scrawled with her handwriting. His chest had clenched with anxiety as she stood next to his bed and started pulling on her coat. He'd picked up the card and crinkled his forehead in bafflement to delay her.

They'd started with the notecards back in the hospital, back when he still had the tube down his throat. She must have stolen them from the office supply closet at work. She'd left a thick stack of them next to his bed so he could write down when he needed something, and the cards had remained there even after he could speak again. Each day at the end of visiting hours, she'd pick one up and scribble a note - a little pick-me-up to keep him company until she resumed her post at his bedside the next morning.

He hadn't expected her to keep it up with the notecards once the hospital released him, but she'd laid one on his bedside table that first evening. He'd turned the card back right side up and ran his index finger over the first word.

"No no," he pretended to correct himself. "Now I see. It's a Smurf."

"Interesting." She had her coat on and began fastening the buttons. "Any Smurf in particular?"

"Are there different ones?"

"Sure. There's Papa Smurf. There's Smurfette. There's the geeky one with the glasses...."

He'd squinted some more and pointed his finger at the colon she'd used for punctuation. "Are those the glasses?"

"It's not a Smurf, David."

"Some kind of woodland creature, then."

"No, it's actually words."

"Words?"

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