Page 164 of Lady and the Hitman
She looked at me. “It depends. Could be weeks. Could be months. But I don’t want to give false hope. His heart’s under significant strain.”
My father let out a breath that sounded more like a sigh than anything else. His eyelids drifted shut again.
The doctor smiled faintly at him, then turned back to us. “I’ll leave you some materials to look over. Let me know how you’d like to proceed.”
She walked out, shoes squeaking softly on the tile.
The door clicked closed.
Silence rushed in.
I stared at the floor, then at my father’s hand—veins raised, skin thin. When had that happened? When had he started looking like someone I could lose?
I’d known he was mortal. Of course, I had. I wasn’t a child. But the idea of him actually dying had never registered. Not for real. He’d always been strong. Unshakable. The kind of man who could fix a broken well pump, quote Steinbeck from memory, and knock a wasp’s nest down with one swing of a shovel. He wasn’t flashy. He wasn’t loud. But he was solid. Constant.
And seeing him like this—weak, small, pale against all that sterile white—it cracked something open in me I didn’t know how to close.
I looked over at my mom.
She was staring at the same spot on the wall she’d been fixated on since the doctor walked in. Her jaw was tight. Her eyes glassy. Her knuckles white around the handle of her oversized leather tote.
“Mom?” I said softly.
Nothing.
“Hope,” I tried again, more firmly this time. “Talk to me.”
She blinked. Once. Twice.
Then she sat down heavily in the vinyl chair beside the bed and stared at her hands like they weren’t hers.
“Why didn’t we catch this sooner?” she whispered.
I hesitated. “Maybe we did. Maybe we just … didn’t know what it meant.”
“No.” She shook her head, sharp and sudden. “No, I mean—why didn’t I catch it? I sleep next to him every night. I should’ve known something was wrong.”
I stepped closer, crouched beside her. “You couldn’t have known.”
“I should’ve,” she repeated, voice cracking. “I saw how tired he was. I saw him wince when he bent over to pull weeds. But I thought it was age. I thought it was the heat, the stress, the damn nursery?—”
She stopped.
Her hands started to tremble.
I touched her arm. “It’s okay. He’s here. He’s still here.”
She didn’t look at me.
Instead, she reached into her tote bag and pulled out a crumpled manila folder. Her fingers struggled with theclasp. When she finally got it open, she handed me a stack of papers.
I looked down.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
Statement of Lapsed Coverage.
Termination Date: May 1.
