The apples sit heavier in the plastic bag than four pieces of fruit have any right to. My fingers ache around the handles, and my pulse still has not steadied since the elevator doors closed on Adrian and his mother. I stop halfway down the corridor and pull air into my lungs like I am surfacing from somewhere deep underwater. The hospital lights buzz overhead, too white and too steady, like they are trying to expose every c***k I am holding together.
Of course he has a soft side. He just never spent a single ounce of it on me, not even on the days I begged him to look at me like I was a person. Eight years ago that man looked at me the way a banker looks at a bad investment, and today he was bending himself in half to keep a frail woman warm in a hospital hallway. I do not know which ver
