I can let the ring go. Would like to.  

I like it when doctors are fast. You want to talk about your hair, but they say no. They have other matters to get to. I like it when they come in fast, like they’re out of breath. It makes you feel like a marble between gears. The madness is around you, but not within. You cannot get cancer, dear. Don’t even dream of it.   

No. The ring will not come off.   

Dr. Brandt says, “How long has it been on?”  

That’s the funny thing. It’s only been two years, and I haven’t gained any weight. I imagine a tree growing around a ribbon. Can we change so fast?   

Brandt is a put-together man. He has been stunted in no category. He is everything a fifty-year-old man should be, and thus, fits the criteria of a doctor. He wears glasses in a worldly and dignified manner. I have not seen his handwriting, but I’m sure it would fit whatever joke would be made.   

“What happened?” he says.  

The last time he saw me, I was with Curtis. Curtis accompanied my appointments like I was his child, and these were pediatrics. Curtis liked to sit on the bed next to me and pretend to take photos as I changed into my gown by framing his fingers around his eyes. Curtis reminded me of the medical questions I’d like to ask and held my hand when getting my blood pressure taken, telling the nurse, ‘It’s always high.’ The last time Dr. Brandt had seen me, my last name had been Cabell. Does that affect the paperwork?   

“We both decided it was for the best,” I say. “There’s no bad blood.”  

It takes one confused Brandt look before I understand his question was not about my marriage, but a muttered one to himself, such as, how could this ring get stuck, what are the steps now? In the space after, I realize how false my pre-written statement comes across, and how strange and sad I must sound. Of course, there is bad blood. You cannot end a marriage without bad blood. Even Brandt doesn’t know what to say.   

I work my hands through the bowl as he eyes the ring. The medical lubricant is thick and sludgy. He says, “Was it always tight?”   

“It must have been. Are my hands swollen?”  

“No, no.”  

I think of my mother, who could never get her blood drawn properly. She was some kind of medical anomaly. They would bring the head nurse out to replace the flustered one, until my mother would say, ‘Do you want me to do it myself?’  

“Maybe it’s swollen because of the cold,” I say.  

“No, no,” Brandt says again. He has been here longer than I would like. Than I would feel comfortable.   

For all his flaws, Curtis could hold certainty in his face. You took one look at him and knew that all would be alright. I could not hold it anywhere in my body. Curtis had his own make-up of the world, and he trusted it. He never once doubted his own assessment.   

“Do I need to change my paperwork?” I ask Brandt. It is all I can think to say. If I were my mother or Curtis, I would be furious that he could not keep the conversation going himself. “My last name.”  

“Divorce,” Brandt says. “Yes. Likely. We can sort that at the front.”  

“The front,” I say. “Yes. At the desk. When I’m leaving?”  

“They should have caught that already,” Brandt says. “Odd.”  

“I didn’t tell them,” I say. “I didn’t think of it.” I look at my hand. In all that lubricant, it does look swollen. “I am only in the first steps. I am only just getting the ring off.”  

“Yes,” Brandt says, and smiles. It feels good to have it out. To get the light on it. “Two minutes now. Two minutes and we will do the thing.”  

Do the thing? Is this professional talk? Is this who doctors are when you corner them in a room? When they stop chasing their own tails? For a second, I consider that he is skittish and attracted to me. The next moment, I consider that it is me who is attracted to him. I imagine yanking at his ring. Divorced thoughts. Un-addressable.   

After a pause, he says, “Are you stressed?”   

“Entirely,” I say. I am surprised by how raw and willful I sound. “All of me.”   

“These things are tough. They take time.”  

“I worry my hair is falling out.”  

He looks at my scalp and squints. “It isn’t.”   

“Good,” I say, but I had only meant it as a joke.   

He takes my hand between his, and it is a slippery thing. He is wearing gloves, but I still feel his hair under the latex.   

“It’s coming,” Brandt says. “It’s loosening now.”  

“Good,” I say. You could not do this to a tree. You could not grease a whole tree.  

“Just some tugging now,” he says. I tell him I can take a little discomfort.   

His body is still, but he puts the whole of himself into it. He grits his face, strains it, as his fingers swipe and loosen the circumference.   

“You would think they have a machine for this,” I say. It strikes me as a self-centered thing to have said. Like I deserve a machine.  

Brandt says, “You would think.” Then, “Hurts?”   

“No.”  

“Would you like it to hurt more?” I tell him no. Curtis always laughed at the right time. He could recognize a joke by the timing alone. I learned to follow his lead.  

Brandt pushes hard against the ring, and I know this is a moment I would like Curtis. I would look at him, and he would touch my shoulder to steady me, or not touch me, so I could practice steadying myself. And then I realize, in some woozy way, he could never be part of this moment. In no world would he accompany the removal of my wedding ring. No, Curtis could not exist in this room at all.   

I remind myself that he was horrible. That he never let me know anything at all.   

The ring slips. It makes the sound of a cork coming out of a bottle, but quietly.   

Brandt looks at me with triumph but does not look away.  

“You’re crying,” he says.   

“Yes,” I say. I had hoped he wouldn’t notice. “Do you have anything for that?” I’m not sure if my laugh is real or false.  

“Tissues,” he says. “Many tissues.” He tells me he is sorry, then gestures to my nose.

I laugh again, and Brandt puts his slippery hand on mine. “Thank you,” I say. “I’m okay,” I say.   

He tells me he will be back, and I think he will come with a fix-all medicine or some sort of sage advice. When he returns, he brings me a pumice stone to remove the lubricant and a salve for any irritation. He prods at my knuckle, tells me I’ll be alright, and asks if I will consider selling the ring. The hospital has a pawn shop in the back, he says, and I could trade it for prescriptions. A joke. I am starting to understand his dry sense of humor.   

He leaves me with directions on how to leave the hospital. How to find the lobby. As he exits, I wonder how long they would let me stay in this room. Would they check if I was gone before they came in with the next patient? I hear Brandt enter a room three doors away. I hear the dry way he addresses his patient: “What have we today?”  

I hold the ring in my palm. I’m not used to it as its own object. I hold it up to the light because it seems the proper and worldly thing to do. I remember the second time I saw it. I had helped Curtis pick it out, and still, I was surprised by it when it sat in its own little box. It had been one thing in the jewelry shop and outside another thing altogether. Now it is a third thing, and I don’t know it any longer.   

This is the time Curtis would touch my shoulder and say, Let’s go.   

I am never sure when I can leave a place. Not even when they give instructions. Not when they tell me where the exit is. I’m no good at ending a conversation. A guest will clap their legs, say ‘Well’, and I will ask another question. I am safe behind questions.   

I listen to Brandt’s voice in the other room. He tells the patient that their problem is no problem. He says they don’t need to worry, and that their toenail will be fixed in no time. There is a gel that can handle this all, he says. If not, a pill. Yes, it may take a few months. Yes, the medicine is a bit tough on the spleen. But what is a few months anyway? What is a spleen?  

“Let’s go,” I say to myself.   

I remind myself of the directions he gave me. Down the hall and to the left.   

I slip the ring back on my finger to see if it will come off so easily again.