The hospital hallway smells like antiseptic and fear, and I do not belong here, and I know it, and I stay anyway.
We drove in two cars, silent and fast, my mother gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles went white the entire way. Nobody mentioned Carol's accusation. Nobody mentioned the dinner table, or the kiss, or any of it. Some things simply stop mattering the second a phone rings with the word hospital attached to it, and I am learning that fact in real time, sitting in a plastic chair that is somehow colder than the room around it.
Greg paces. He has been pacing since we arrived, twenty minutes now, maybe longer, his phone clutched in one hand like it might ring again with better news if he just holds it tightly enough. My mother sits beside him, one hand on his back, saying not
