I went because I needed to understand. I wanted to look into her eyes and maybe finally find the answer Daniel had been refusing to give me for months.
But the moment I stepped into that hospital room, everything I believed about my life broke apart.
My purse slipped from my hand. My keys, lipstick, reading glasses, and tissues scattered across the floor with a sharp crash that rang through the hallway like a gunshot. Both of them looked up instantly.
And in that single moment, the woman I had been until then disappeared.
The corridors of St. Matthew’s Hospital in Austin smelled of bleach, saline, and exhaustion. The bright overhead lights made everyone look ill, even healthy visitors. I knew hospitals better than most people. I had spent nearly my entire adult life working as a nurse. I had welcomed babies into the world, stood beside families saying goodbye, comforted terrified mothers, and held cold hands in the middle of the night.
I thought I understood every kind of pain.
I had never seen this one.