Jacob
Hospitals stripped things down.
Not in a clean, meaningful way. Nothing that useful.
They stripped things down by giving you nowhere to put yourself. You sat. You waited. You listened for footsteps. You watched doors open and close and understood, over and over, that the one thing you wanted was the one thing no amount of competence could produce.
An answer.
I sat well.
I was good at that.
Upright. Contained. Phone in hand. The picture of a man handling the situation, even when the situation required nothing from him except not falling apart in public.
Bella was safe. My parents had her. She had eaten dinner, drawn a cat for Edward, and fallen asleep with one of my mother’s dogs at the foot of the bed.
That was handled.
Everything else was suspended.
I noticed Leah first t
