Turn 10 of 226

Tell Diane the truth — I feel amazing and I don't know why. She is even more confused

Lena watches Diane's arms fold tighter, the cardigan bunching at the elbows, and she feels the warmth pulse steady and patient beneath her palms. She has already told the truth once and it did not land. She can see it on Diane's face — the way the sincerity is harder for her to process than defiance would be. If Lena were hostile, Diane could escalate. If Lena were tearful, Diane could comfort. But Lena is calm and earnest and smells like four days of sweat, and Diane has no protocol for that.

"I know you don't believe me," Lena says. She leans forward and her belly presses against the desk edge, soft flesh deforming around it, and she does not adjust or pull back.

"But I'm not having a breakdown. I'm not on something. I called in sick yesterday because I wanted to spend the day in my apartment, and I did, and it was one of the best days I've had in years. I came to work today because I actually wanted to work. And I did." She gestures at the screen, the quarterly summary, the closed tickets.

"That's the truth. All of it."

Diane's jaw works. She unfolds her arms, refolds them. The gesture is unconscious — a body searching for a stable position and not finding one.

"You wanted to spend the day in your apartment," she repeats, slowly, as though testing each word for structural soundness.

"Yes."

"Doing what?"

Lena considers this. She could edit. She could say she rested, watched television, caught up on sleep — the acceptable vocabulary for a sick day. But the warmth is humming and the truth has been easy so far and she does not feel like stopping now.

"I explored my body," she says. "I exercised. I ate. I spent time figuring out how I've changed. I enjoyed it."

The silence that follows is different from the earlier ones. It has weight. Diane's face has passed through confusion into something more complicated — a place where professional concern and personal bewilderment are tangled together and neither is winning. She looks at Lena's belly, bare and flushed, resting against the desk. She looks at the bare feet on the carpet. She looks at the screen with its immaculate quarterly summary, and Lena can see her doing the math and coming up short on both sides. The work says Lena is functional. The woman says Lena is coming apart. Both things are true and neither is true and Diane is standing in the gap between them with her arms crossed and her cardigan buttoned to the throat.

"How you've changed," Diane says, and it is not a question. It is the sound of someone placing the last piece into a puzzle and discovering that the picture on the box does not match the pieces inside.