The hum of the hallway outside was hardly heard any longer. Fluorescent lights, in-and-out tides of the nurses, occasional beep of the machines-it became the background of the noise. She sat beside Hazel's bed and smoothed out her daughter's blanket, observing the slow rise and fall of her chest. Stable. She is stable. That should be everything that counted.
But wasn't.
Her mind kept replaying the expression on Jaxon's face when he first laid eyes on Hazel: that diffidence, as though he's trying to figure out the pieces of a puzzle he didn't even know was there. She should have been telling him the truth. Maybe. Possibly not. That fear of what that truth might mean pressed her lips shut.
Her phone buzzed on the bedside table. She reached for it and squinted at the name coming up on the
