46It was nightfall by the time Maggie left the hospital. The thunderstorms kept to the north, but clouds still clogged the sky. She longed to see a sunset, stars—anything but clouds. Outside, the air was warm and fragrant, a mixture of gardenias with impending rain, unlike her mother’s hospital room that reeked of disinfectants and selfish desperation.
“I think it may have been a call for help,” the young Dr. Lawrence had told Maggie before he allowed her to enter her mother’s room. He said it as though his diagnosis was unique and original, as if Maggie had never heard anything similar before in regards to her mother’s many attempts to end her life. By now, Maggie thought she had heard it all.
But there was something her mother said just as she drifted off into an exhausted sleep. It st
