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MAKES YOU STRONGER<br />
THERE’S NO E-MAIL from Olly. Not one. I even check my spam folder. This shouldn’t<br />
bother me and it doesn’t. It doesn’t bother me a lot. In the interest of thoroughness, I<br />
refresh my e-mail three more times in about two seconds. Maybe it’s just hiding<br />
somewhere, stuck behind another one.<br />
Carla walks in as I’m about to refresh again.<br />
“I didn’t think you’d be able to unearth that thing,” she says.<br />
“Good morning to you, too,” I say, squinting down at the screen.<br />
She smiles and begins her daily unpacking-of-the-medical-bag ritual. Why she doesn’t<br />
leave it here overnight is a mystery.<br />
“Why are you frowning? Another dead cat video?” Her smile is toothy and wide, very<br />
Cheshire Cat–like. Any minute now her body will disappear, leaving just a grinning<br />
floating head in its wake.<br />
“Olly didn’t send me any e-mails.”<br />
I believe nonplussed is the word for her expression.<br />
“All weekend,” I say, by way of illumination.<br />
“I see.” She puts the stethoscope in her ears and the thermometer under my tongue.<br />
“Did you e-mail him?”<br />
“Yesh.” I talk around the thermometer.<br />
“Don’t talk, just nod.”<br />
“Sawwy.”<br />
She rolls her eyes and we wait for the beep.<br />
“Ninety-nine point eight,” I say, handing the thermometer back to her. “I basically told<br />
him not to write. Am I being ridiculous?”<br />
She motions for me to turn around so she can listen to my lungs but doesn’t respond.<br />
“How ridiculous?” I prompt. “On a scale of one to ten, one being perfectly rational and<br />
reasonable and ten being absurd and certifiable.”<br />
“About an eight,” she says without hesitation.<br />
I’d been expecting her to say twelve, so eight seems like a victory. I tell her so and she<br />
laughs at me.<br />
“So you told him not to write to you and then he didn’t write to you. This is what you’re<br />
telling me?”<br />
“Well, I didn’t say DON’T WRITE in big, bold letters or anything. I just said I was busy.”<br />
I think she’s going to make fun of me, but she doesn’t.