A man in a white doctor’s coat was standing in the doorway.
The first thing the doctor did was close the door like he was afraid the truth might escape into the hallway.
That small movement hit me harder than anything else. Men only closed doors like that when they were about to lie, confess, or beg. He looked exhausted, pale around the mouth, the collar of his white coat slightly crooked.
I sat up straighter before the nurses could stop me. The IV tugged at my arm, but I barely felt it. My father was dead. Daniel was standing beside my bed like a storm. And now this stranger in a white coat was about to tell me how a man with a mark on his neck, no wristband, and a body placed too neatly on a metal table had somehow died of ordinary heartbreak.
“Say it,” I told him.
The doctor blinke
