Chapter 46I wasn’t ready to see Rocco in his comatose state, hooked up to IV tubes and monitors and machines that were controlling his breathing.
When I arrived on the third floor, I met up with my parents in the family waiting room. My father hugged me and my mother told me that ICU patients could only have one visitor per day for ten minutes. “Hospital rules,” she said, pulling me in a rose-scented hug.
I nodded and followed them to the nurses’ station where an older woman showed me to Rocco’s room. Frightened, I ambled behind the nurse to Rocco’s private room at the end of a labyrinth of white corridors.
“Ten minutes,” she said, handing me an anti-viral facemask to put on and gesturing me into a quiet alcove where machines beeped and hissed and Rocco lay beneath a thin white sheet. H
