Chapter 6
I could only nod.
“Now,” she said, after a while, in her practical voice. “I have to ask you something for the chart. We need an emergency contact, and I’m guessing you’d like the current one removed.”
On her clipboard, the emergency contact field listed my mother’s name in neat block letters.
Diane Harding. Mother.
I stared at it.
“I don’t know who to put,” I admitted. “Most of the people I love are colleagues. Or they’re in other states. Or they’re…” My voice weakened. “I don’t have anyone.”
“Nobody?”
“I have a lawyer who’s sleeping in a waiting room chair. I have a best friend in Austin who doesn’t know I’m here because I didn’t want to worry her.” A broken laugh escaped me. “I didn’t want to bother anyone. Isn’t that ridiculous? I was afraid of being a bother.”
Marisol took out her pen and carefully crossed out Mom’s name.
“You are not a bother,” she said. “You’re a patient. And a person. Those two things come with a right to be worried about.”
I pressed my lips together.
“Put Julian,” I said finally. “And his wife, Camille, if she’s willing. And Tessa Ramirez, in Austin. I’ll give you her number.”
“That’s three people,” Marisol said. “That’s a start.”
“It’s a start,” I echoed.
She wrote each name down. When she tucked away the clipboard, something inside me loosened.
For the first time I could remember, I fell asleep without waiting for a phone call.
The Morning After the Night
The critical window ended at 5:12 a.m.
I remember the exact minute because Dr. Patel entered carrying a tablet and a tired but genuine smile, then said what I’d waited two days to hear.
“Your numbers are steady. Your scans look clean. You’ve turned the corner, Miranda.”
Julian had fallen asleep sitting upright in the hall, tie loosened. He appeared in the doorway and closed his eyes for three seconds. When they reopened, they shone suspiciously.
“I’ll call Camille,” he said. “She’ll want to bring soup.”
“Julian, I can’t eat soup yet.”
“Camille doesn’t accept that as an answer,” he said. “You’ll see.”
He was right.
At nine, she arrived in a green coat carrying a thermos, clementines, and a paperback she’d decided I’d enjoy. She kissed my forehead like we’d known each other for years and ordered me not to argue.
I didn’t.
At 9:40, the door opened again.
“I cannot believe you did this alone.”
Tessa Ramirez stood there with a rolling suitcase, windswept hair, and the frantic expression of someone who’d caught the first flight from Austin at five that morning. For six years she’d been my chief operating officer, the woman who stayed with me past midnight eating cold pizza and debating hospital software until we laughed too hard to work.
She was also the closest thing I had to a sister.
