Of course, I said.
“I love the poem about the deer. Anyway, she got so interested in talking about all the poetry that she’d read in college, and how she wants to read more, and doesn’t have time to read, and on and on, that, I think she maybe, um—”
“What?”
“Didn’t take out all the staples.” She reached under her sheet, looking around the room as she felt for something with her fingers. “I think I feel one right at the edge of the incision. But maybe not. Maybe it’s just an illusion. Maybe it’s just the edge of where they cut. It’s still quite numb down there. But it really feels like a staple.”
“Mm,” I said. “You should call her and ask her to come back.”
“I don’t want to call her. What if there’s no staple there?”
I waited, then said, “Do you want me to look?”
“No, because it’s a disgusting incision, but yes. If you could just put my mind at rest that all the staples are gone.”
“Happy to do it. Should I do it now?”
“Let me get arranged. Turn around for a second. I need to maintain what’s left of my modesty.”
I turned around while Roz adjusted the bedclothes.
“That’s the best I can do,” she said. When I turned back, she had folded the sheet back and tucked it around her hips, leaving a bit of herself exposed. “It’s this place right here,” she said.
I knelt by the bed and looked at her pale skin and the very white and pink healing scar where the surgeon had cut. I was surprised that they’d been able to get Roz’s whole uterine fibroid complex out through a cut that size. I could see two rows of tiny holes where the staples had been, and there were still traces of yellow antiseptic on the thin-lipped incision. “It’s discreet,” I said.
“Not all that discreet, but she told me that if they’d waited any longer they would have had to cut this way, up and down, and I didn’t want that.”
“No, you never want that,” I said.
“Two pounds of meat came out of me. A real Sunday roast.”
“Jesus, Roz. It looks like it’s healing well.”
“Yes, but could you just have a look right — here.” She tapped a place on the end of the wound.
I looked. “It’s red and it’s a little swollen,” I said. Then I saw a glint of something silver. “You’re right, there’s a staple right in here. It’s sort of hidden. It’s right here!”
“Dang, I knew it.”
“You should call Ellen. She should come back and take it out.”
“I guess I should. I really don’t want to, though. It’ll embarrass her. She’ll know she messed up.”
“Well, she sort of did.”
Roz looked at me and raised an eyebrow. “The staple remover is just over there,” she said. She pointed to a plastic bag on a side table near a lamp. I went over to it.
In the bag was some gauze, a tool that looked like a hole puncher, and about twenty bent staples. I looked at the tool and at the bent staples. I whistled.
“What do you think?” Roz said.
“About taking out your staple? I guess I could give it a try. But I’m worried I’d do it wrong and maybe hurt you.”
“It’s not that hard. I watched her do it. I thought it would hurt, but it didn’t. She was chatting away.”
“Yes, but she removes staples all the time. She’s a trained professional.”
“And yet she missed one.”
I decided I really had to step up to the plate. “Let me practice first,” I said. I fished out one of the staples from the bag and used my fingers to bend it to its original angular C shape, so that the V-shaped kink in its back was gone. Then, holding it in the air, I gave it a trial pinch with the staple remover. The two staple ends lifted. It didn’t seem too hard. It certainly wasn’t as difficult as pulling a staple out of a piece of paper. I washed my hands in the bathroom. Over the towel holder was a woodblock print of three eggs in a nest.
I went back to the bed and knelt. “You ready?”
“I’m ready.”
I steadied my arm on Roz’s leg and took a breath. “Here goes.” I angled the machine so that the tiny pointed nippers were over and under the visible silver segment of staple. “Does that hurt?” I said.
“No.”
I squeezed. “I’m squeezing now,” I said. “Does that hurt?”
“Nope.”
I squeezed some more. The staple bent upward and its sharp edges withdrew from Roz’s soft, vulnerable skin. Her sheet had shifted a little and I could see the edge of her pubic hair. It wasn’t a sexual thing — it was just a part of the whole experience.
“Got it!” I said.
“Ah, how wonderful,” said Roz, pulling up the sheet. She put her hand on her chest. “Relief.”
I put the last staple in the bag. “The offending scrap of metal is officially gone,” I said. I noticed my hand was trembling.
“Now I’ll stop fretting,” Roz said. “Thank you for all your help. You’ve been a wonderful, dear person through this whole ordeal.”
“Nothing to it,” I said. “My pleasure. And I have another question for you. Would you like to get married? Because I think it’s time.”
“Oh, baby — that’s very nice of you.”
“Don’t say no yet, I’m just throwing it out there. I know it’s abrupt. I don’t have any Reiki music for you, but I’ll play you a song.”
“One of your songs?”
I slid the CD in her clock radio. “It’s still rough. Forgive the intonation.” I hit Play. Two Indian bansuri flutes came on, playing in parallel thirds at a hundred beats per minute, with some skipping high hat and a few chords on the Mark II keyboard. Then I heard myself singing:
I saw you and thought you looked very nice
You said you had other places to be
We went to a restaurant
Had a salad or two
Talked about some things
And found out what we wanted to do
Spent more time together
In the library and out in the town
Went to a dance
But the music was way too loud
Oh it was fun
To be with you
Oh it was fun
To be with you
Mine was mine and yours was truly yours
Then we ate some cake and shared it with two forks
Nobody was able to take us from each other
And then one day we woke up under the same cover
Oh it was fun
To be with you
Oh it was fun
To be with you
Maybe you think I’m being premature
I’ve had trouble with that in the past for sure
But I know that it’s time
To pop that question
Rhyme it up in rhyme
Isn’t it time that you and I should marry
I really don’t want you going out with Dick and Harry
Find your shoes
Walk the walk
Get plenty of sleep
Don’t eat the chalk
There’s lots to do
Plenty to see
And that’s why you
Should get married to me
When it was over, Roz sat smiling at me.
“So, what do you think?” I said. I held her hand. “Should I kneel?”
“You already did that when you took out my staple.”
“That’s true.”
Roz said, “I think it’s a lovely song. I think it’s a lovely idea, too, and I love you, but I have to get better first. I have to be thinking clearly.”
“Clear thinking is overrated,” I said.
“I know, but a lot has happened.”
“That’s true. Well, give it some consideration. I’ll leave you with the CD. If you feel up to a dance club with loud music and gyrating bodies, we can go and talk more then.”
“Thank you, Pauly. You’re a dear man.”
We kissed awkwardly — I didn’t want to jostle her in bed.
I drove home thinking, Holy shit, I took out her staple. I have work to do in this world. Even if she decides not to marry me, that was a good moment. It was the best moment of the day.