MI

as collapsed.

nds were already shak

reath coming too fast, my mind doing the useless math it always did...cab fare, my salary that hadn't cleared yet, the fa

i anyway. What els

mil

hing me with the kind of attention that usually meant he a

happ

want him looking at me the way people look at you right

mil

it's not

efore I could f

before, and by the time I hung up, my mother had gone from collaps

ed him decide something in the two s

takin

n't hav

keys. "Then consider it an order from your emplo

ngth left to argue wit

etlights slide across the windshield, my knees pulled up against

bad i

pped, not sure I wanted to finish the sentence, and then finished it anyway because I was too tired to keep it in. "It's expensive. The treatme

a moment. I appreciated t

n't you

you're my

't answer t

ught the gap in it. "Because I don't wa

as what I braced for, but something closer to respect,

re either of us cou

d said made his jaw tighten in a way I recognized from the hospital hallway weeks

d the c

rything

N

more but it

with you," he said final

im. I don't think

there, but stable. For that moment, s

ading from a chart like the words might change if he l

caus

is showing a reaction we didn't expect. I'd like to run

h will t

g underneath it....a concern he wasn't fully putting into words yet,

to do, and went to sit with her until the nu

the hallway before i

air and put my face in my hands and let the last several hours finally land all at once,

st sat down beside me, close enough that I could feel the

id eventually, my voice

not carryin

that. "You ba

tartin

ike a fact rather than a line, undid something in my chest

which of us

When his fingers brushed my cheek a moment later, I let that happen too, some

nd didn't know what I

opped low, rough at the edges in a

tell hi

change my mind, and for one suspended second the hallway nar

pulle

do with it. But some protective instinct reminded me exactly what h

d quietly. "You'

rejection, something more like understandin

d we broke apart fast enough that it must

ion had changed since I'd last seen i

here was something unusual in her reaction.

sual

d me more than his actual word

did, and found him already too alert, too still, the particular stillness I

ow some

d. "I know somet

not what

ne while he said it, and for the first time since I had met h

arently, they

the doctor walked a

ed your mothe

dn't even managed to process it before a

collapse wasn'

ed up

ready wat

er's illness had anything to do with the secr