Blood in the Laundry

New chapter is on the board.

Suit up. Queens is not getting quieter.

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May had asked how many times. Peter stood halfway down the basement stairs, one hand on the rail, looking at the undershirt in her hands as though it belonged to somebody else.

She had asked because the blood was old. Not from this morning, or not all of it. One stain had dried brown along the left seam; another was almost black where the fabric had folded over itself. She could not count injuries from a shirt. She knew that. The question had come out anyway.

Ben appeared at the top of the stairs with a grocery bag under his arm. He stopped when he saw Peter's face, then came down without asking May to explain it. He set the bag beside the dryer. An orange rolled against a box of detergent and stayed there.

"Is it yours?" he asked Peter.

Peter nodded.

May hated the relief she felt at an answer so small. It lasted less than a second.

"Are you bleeding now?"

"No."

"You looked at the shirt before you answered."

"Because I didn't know which stain you meant."

Ben drew a slow breath. He did not tell Peter to come all the way down. The stairs were narrow, and May could see how tightly he held the rail.

"We can sit upstairs," Ben said.

"I don't need to sit."

"That wasn't the question."

Peter tried to smile. It fell apart before either of them had to refuse it.

May lowered the shirt into the laundry sink. She did not turn on the tap. There was a torn place near the collar that she had been covering with her thumb; without it, the fabric sagged open. She had sewn enough of his clothes to know the difference between a snag and something pulled hard against skin.

"I can't tell what happened from this," she said. "I don't want to guess."

"Then don't."

The quickness of it hurt more than the words. Peter saw that and looked down. May knew he could hear her heartbeat in a quiet room when he was paying attention. Perhaps he could hear it now. She had no idea whether he was paying attention to her or the back door or the street beyond it.

Ben picked up the detergent box and moved it away from the sink. "May found it when the washer stopped shaking. I came down because I heard you two. That's all we've done."

"Okay," Peter said.

"I'm telling you because I don't want you wondering what else we've gone through."

Peter's hand loosened on the rail. Not much.

May remembered every pocket she had emptied before washing his jeans when he was little: bus tokens, a bent nail, once a dead battery wrapped in a homework assignment. Laundry had never felt like trespassing. Now she wished she had called him down before lifting the lid.

"I was doing the wash," she said. "I wasn't looking for anything."

"I know."

"Do you?"

Peter finally came down the last three steps. He stood an arm's length from the sink, close enough to see the shirt and far enough not to touch it. "Yes."

May wanted to ask what he had done this morning, and the day before, and why there was a newer dark mark over the old one. She wanted an order of events she could put on a calendar and a person she could call to make him stay home. None of that would tell her whether he needed a doctor tonight.

She put her palms on the sink edge. "Can I see where the blood came from?"

Peter glanced at Ben. "All of it?"

"The place that stained the shirt."

He considered the distance to the stairs. May let him. Ben opened the grocery bag and took out the milk. He held it for a moment, realized there was no refrigerator down here, and set it back.

"The shoulder," Peter said. "Mostly."

Mostly. May kept her face still.

He pulled the collar of his T-shirt aside. The skin above his left shoulder blade was scraped raw along one edge, darker and swollen around it. There was dried blood at the center and an angry strip of fresh red where the cloth had rubbed. May could see bruising disappear beneath the sleeve. She could not tell how deep the worst part went from where she stood.

"Did someone clean that?"

"I did."

"When?"

"Last night."

"And after you put this shirt on?"

Peter glanced down at the sink. "No."

She wanted to touch the uninjured skin to steady him. She didn't. "I'd like to take a picture of the wound. No face. If we call the clinic, it might help me describe what changed by morning."

"You can describe it."

"I can describe what I see tonight. Tomorrow I'll remember what frightened me. That's not the same thing."

Ben looked at May, then at Peter. He did not make the argument for her.

Peter let his collar go. "On your phone?"

"Yes."

"Phones send things places."

"Sometimes." May took hers out but kept it dark in her hand. "I can keep it off any message and show it only to a clinician if we decide to ask. I can't promise a photograph on a phone is perfectly private. If that's too much, I won't take it."

His eyes moved to the sink. "No face. Nothing that tells them where I was."

"Just the shoulder. You can look before I keep it."

"All right."

May unlocked the phone. She waited while he drew the collar back again, then took one photograph. The flash stayed off. The screen gave the wound a colder color than the basement light did; she resisted the urge to take three more until one matched what she meant. She showed him the image. His face was absent. So was the shirt, the basement, everything except a patch of skin and the injury.

"Keep that one," he said.

She locked the phone and put it in her pocket. The photograph felt heavier there than the phone had a moment earlier.

Ben had been quiet long enough for Peter to look almost grateful. Then he asked, "What do you want me to do with the shirt?"

"Wash it," Peter said. "Please."

Ben rested a hand on the dry faucet. "Not yet."

Peter's expression closed. "It's laundry, Uncle Ben."

"It is. That's why I'm asking before I put it in the machine. You can tell me to leave it alone. You can tell me to wash it. But I won't make it disappear while we're all pretending nobody saw it."

"I didn't ask you to pretend."

"You asked me to wash it before May knows whether that shoulder is still opening up."

"It isn't."

"Then answer one thing for me. Did anything go into that shoulder, or is the blood from the skin breaking?"

May turned toward him. It was a blunt question, and better than the dozen she had been storing up. Ben had seen what she could see. Neither of them could see beneath it.

Peter looked at the floor. The washer clicked as it cooled.

"Nothing went in," he said at last. "I scraped it. It bled when I moved, and the shirt stuck to it. That's where this came from."

"You're sure?" May asked.

"Yes."

"And you haven't had trouble breathing?"

He hesitated. "No trouble breathing. My ribs hurt when I take a deep breath. Bruise, not a cut."

May had been ready to bargain for one answer. A second one arrived, and she did not know whether to thank him or ask what frightened him into giving it. She chose neither.

"If the pain gets worse, or you have trouble breathing, we're getting help," she said. "No argument in the stairwell."

"Okay."

Ben looked down at his hand on the faucet. "I won't run the washer tonight."

"You asked. I answered."

"You did. I heard you." Ben moved his hand away. "The shirt can stay where it is until we're certain it isn't pulling at the cut again. I'll wash it tomorrow if you still want me to."

Peter looked as if he might object to the word tomorrow. Instead he nodded. The choice had cost him something. May could see it in the way he kept his arms close to his body, careful not to brush the injured shoulder against anything.

Upstairs, the kitchen clock sounded too loud after the basement. Ben put the milk away and found the oranges that had escaped the bag. May stood at the counter with the clinic's number open on her phone. She had called for school forms, for flu appointments, for Ben's blood pressure prescription. Tonight the digits seemed to belong to a different place.

Peter sat at the table because Ben had set a glass of water there and gone back to the groceries without comment. The kitchen light caught the edge of his collar. May could see only clean fabric now.

"I'm going to call the after-hours line," she said. "I can ask what symptoms mean we shouldn't wait until morning. I don't have to give them your name to ask that."

Peter turned the glass with both hands. "Are you going to send the picture?"

"No. Not without asking you again."

"Okay."

The recorded menu offered appointments, billing, and a number for urgent medical questions. May selected the last. A voice told her to leave a name and callback number; a clinician would return calls in the order received. There was no person to ask anonymously. She hung up before the tone.

Ben caught her eye across the room. She showed him the screen, not Peter's photograph. "Callback. Name required."

"We can call with mine," Peter said.

May hadn't expected him to offer. "You don't have to decide because I'm standing here."

"I want to know whether it needs somebody to look at it. I just don't want to tell a recording the rest of my life."

"Neither do I."

She dialed again. This time she left Peter's first name, her number, and a plain description: shoulder abrasion that had bled again after clothing rubbed it, rib pain with deep breaths, no current breathing difficulty. She did not add a story she could not verify. When she finished, the kitchen did not become safer. The phone simply had somewhere to ring.

Peter drank half the water. "I can cover the callback."

"You can answer it with me," May said. "If they ask something private, you decide what to say. But I won't make up an answer for you."

His jaw tightened. "I wasn't asking you to."

"I know." She stopped. "No, I don't. I keep trying to know things from a shirt."

Ben peeled an orange over the sink. The skin came away in one piece. "Nobody's good at being surprised by blood."

Peter gave a brief, tired laugh. "You could put that on a greeting card."

"I could. Your aunt would refuse to stock it."

"Correct," May said.

The small laugh did not cure anything. It let Peter lean back in his chair, though, and Ben passed him half the orange without asking whether he wanted it. He took a slice.

Later, when the dishes were put away, May checked the phone once. No return call yet. Peter had gone to his room with a clean shirt and a promise to wake her if his breathing changed. She did not pretend the promise was a medical examination. It was, at least, something he had said aloud.

Ben found her at the basement door. "You want me to bring the shirt up?"

"Leave it in the sink."

"I was going to."

"I know." She touched the banister, remembering his hand on the faucet. "Thank you for asking him."

"He might have answered you."

"I might have asked him twelve things at once."

Ben considered that. "Tomorrow we can figure out one thing at a time."

May looked toward the quiet hall. She thought of the phone in her pocket, the photograph she had taken with permission, and the question that had finally received an answer. None of it told her how many times Peter had been hurt. Downstairs, the shirt waited in the laundry sink, unwashed. She left the light on over it and went to wait for the call.

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