What We Carry

The trailer was cold. Danny knew this before he even opened the door because the cold was in the air outside, seeping through the thin walls of the Pine Ridge Trailer Park, waiting for him.

Dottie's trailer was at the back of the park, past the laundry machine that was always broken and past the ditch that smelled like something died in it. The trailer itself was a single-wide, white, with a metal roof that had been painted two years ago and was already peeling. A single light burned in the front window.

Danny knocked. Dottie opened the door. She was wearing a bathrobe that had been pink once. Her hands were fists. Her face was gray.

"Danny," she said. "What are you doing here?"

"I need a place to stay."

"My son Kevin said he'd let you stay."

"Kevin's place is full."

Dottie looked at him for a moment. Then she stepped aside.

The inside of the trailer was small. One room, divided by a curtain that was held by a coat hanger. A kitchen area with a sink that leaked. A couch that had a mattress on it and a blanket that was not enough. A small table with a plate and a cup on it. The heater in the corner was an electric unit that Danny had seen in hardware store catalogs for twelve dollars. It was unplugged.

"It's broken," Danny said.

"It was working last week."

"Did anyone fix it?"

"I called the landlord."

"The landlord?"

"I called."

Danny went to the kitchen and looked at the electrical outlet. The cord was plugged in. The switch on the heater was on. He pressed the reset button. Nothing.

He went back to the living room. Dottie was sitting on the couch. The cat was on her lap. The cat was thin and orange and had one ear that was torn.

"How long has the heater been broken?" Danny asked.

"Ten days."

"You've been sitting here ten days with a broken heater?"

"I've been sitting here a long time with a lot of broken things."

Danny went to the hardware store the next morning. He bought a new heating element — nine dollars — and a screwdriver and a roll of duct tape. He came back and took the heater apart. The element was burned out. He replaced it. He plugged it in. The heater hummed. The air did not get warmer for a long time, but the hum was something.

Dottie watched him from the couch. "You gonna stay?" she asked.

"Yeah."

"How long?"

" however long it takes."

"What takes?"

Danny did not have an answer for that.

He stayed.

The first week was worse than he expected. Not because Dottie was difficult — she was not. She was quiet, mostly, sitting on the couch with the cat on her lap, watching him move around the trailer like a man in his own house who had forgotten how to be at home.

She was difficult in other ways. The medications. Dottie had three prescriptions — one for the arthritis, one for the blood pressure, one for sleep. The arthritis pills cost forty-two dollars a month. The blood pressure pills cost twenty-eight. The sleep pills cost nineteen. Danny made eight hundred dollars a month, if he worked every shift, and the plant was not offering overtime, and his landlord had given him a written warning that the third warning meant getting out.

He could not afford the medications. He told Dottie this on the fourth day, standing in the kitchen while she drank coffee from a chipped cup.

"I know," she said.

"I can call the pharmacy. Ask for a discount."

"Don't. They'll give you a smaller dose and I'll take it and the pain will come back and I'll take more and they'll charge me more. It's a circle."

He called the pharmacy anyway. The pharmacist — a young man with a beard and tired eyes — told him about a generic version of the arthritis medication that was fifteen dollars cheaper. Danny bought it. Dottie took it. The pain came back after three days.

He stopped counting.

The five children called once a week. They rotated — one child per week, calling on Sunday evening, talking for fifteen minutes while Danny stood in the kitchen pretending to wash dishes.

Kevin: "How's she doing?" Danny: "Same." Kevin: "Tell her I called." Click.

Mike: "Is she okay?" Danny: "Yeah." Mike: "Maybe I'll come see her next month." Click.

Teresa: "The doctor said her arthritis is getting worse." Danny: "I know." Teresa: "Do you think we should look into a nursing home?" Danny: "She doesn't want a nursing home." Teresa: "How do you know?" Click.

Becky, from Texas: "Mom, I wish I could be there." Dottie, from the couch: "I know, baby. Tell your kids I said hi." Becky: "I'll send some money." Click.

Frank, from California: "Mom, when am I coming home?" Dottie: "Soon, Frankie. Soon." Click.

Danny washed the dishes. The water was cold. The soap was almost gone. He dried the plate and the cup and put them in the cupboard.

He almost left. Not in the way people leave in movies — with a slammed door and a dramatic exit. He almost left in the way people actually leave: by not getting up in the morning. By sitting on the edge of the mattress and staring at the wall and thinking about the phone call he would make to his landlord and the words he would say and the silence that would follow.

Three times he almost left. Each time, something stopped him. The first time, it was the cat — the cat walked past him in the hallway and rubbed against his leg, and he put his foot down and the cat stayed there, and he could not pick it up and leave it. The second time, it was Dottie, sleeping on the couch with the blanket pulled up to her chin, her hands curled into fists even in sleep. The third time, it was the heater — it worked, and the trailer was warm, and he had fixed it, and he thought: I fixed something.

Then came the fever.

Three in the morning. Danny was awake because the trailer was making a sound he had never heard before — a low, rhythmic creaking that came from the couch. He got up and went to the living room.

Dottie was shivering. Not the small shiver of someone who is cold — the violent, full-body shaking of someone whose internal temperature had gone past the point of no return. Her face was red. Her breathing was fast. Her hands, curled into fists, were pressing into the couch cushions.

"Dottie," Danny said. He touched her forehead. She burned.

"Phone," she said. Her voice was thin.

The phone was on the wall. Danny picked it up. No dial tone. The line was cut — he had not noticed because he had not needed to use it. He put the phone down.

"Hospital," he said.

"No," she said. "Too expensive."

He picked her up. She weighed nothing. Her head fell against his shoulder. Her breathing was hot against his neck. He carried her out of the trailer, through the dark parking lot, past the broken laundry machine and the ditch, and into the rain.

It was raining — not a storm, just a steady, cold rain that soaked through his shoes and his jeans and the shirt underneath. He walked. Two miles to the emergency room at Youngstown Regional. His feet made sucking sounds in his soaked shoes. Dottie's head was on his shoulder. Her breath was hot. His face was cold.

At the ER, a nurse in scrubs looked at them — at Danny, soaked and shivering, carrying a woman who was burning up and barely conscious — and said: "Bring her in."

They sat in the waiting room for forty minutes. Danny sat on a plastic chair. Dottie sat on his lap, her head against his chest, her breathing slower now, the fever still high but no longer climbing. Danny did not move. He held her with arms that were shaking from cold and from something else he would not name.

The doctor came. He was young — younger than Danny expected for an ER doctor. He took Dottie's temperature: forty degrees. He prescribed antibiotics and fluids and told Danny to keep her warm and to bring her back if it went above forty-one.

Danny carried her back to the trailer. The rain had stopped. The parking lot was wet and reflected the light from the streetlamps like a mirror. He opened the door. He carried her to the couch. He pulled the blanket over her. He sat on the floor beside the couch and leaned against it and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep.

When he woke up, the heater was humming. The cat was on the couch next to Dottie. Dottie was awake. She was looking at him.

"I know what you came for," she said.

Danny sat up. "I know."

"I know," she said. And then, after a pause: "Stay anyway."

He made coffee the next morning. The pot leaked. He put a cup under the drip and caught it with his hand and wiped it with his sleeve. The cat walked past him without stopping. Dottie was sitting on the couch, propped up on pillows, reading a magazine she had been reading for three weeks.

Danny sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the wall. He did not know what he was going to do. He did not know if he was going to stay or leave or do anything that had a name.

He made more coffee.
OTMES V2 Objective Code

| Field | Value |
| :--- | :--- |
| Code | `OTMES-v2-E1310-78M5-225R784-7012C` |
| E_total | 7.84 |
| Dominant Mode | 5 |
| Dominant Angle | 225.0° |
| Rank | 8 |
| Dominance Ratio | 0.56 |
| Irreversibility | 0.4 |
| M Vector | [7.0, 0.0, 3.0, 2.0, 4.0, 6.0, 4.0, 0.0, 2.0, 2.0] |
| N Vector | [0.7, 0.3] |
| K Vector | [0.4, 0.6] |

Transformation from Original: TI 17.8 → 7.84, θ 155° → 225.0°, M1 ↓, Mode 5