The waiting room felt stifling, its dim lighting and cold chairs doing nothing to ease the weight pressing down on my chest. My family sat across from me, arranged neatly as though for a portrait, each of them with fixed, artificial smiles, as if everything were perfect. My mother, her dark hair pinned back meticulously, looked at me with a glance that held more relief than warmth, her eyes skimming over me as though ticking off a checklist.
Beside her sat my little sister, who fidgeted in her seat, her fingers twisting the hem of her sweater, gaze darting around the room like she had somewhere else she would rather be. It stung, even if I could understand her youthful impatience. But the indifference in my mother’s face, and the near-empty seat beside her husband—my stepdad—stung even de
