He turns his head when he hears it, eyes settling on me like he’s anchoring himself.
“Thanks for coming,” he says.
I nod and sit beside him, close enough that our knees touch. The contact is gentle. For a moment, neither of us speaks.
Then he exhales slowly, dragging a hand down his face.
“When Frank died,” he begins, voice low, “it felt like a crack split through everything that I’d spent years keeping sealed.”
I don’t interrupt.
“I’ve lost patients before,” he continues. “Hundreds. Maybe more. I know how this ends. I know how to compartmentalize. I know how to keep functioning.”
His hands flex together, knuckles whitening.
“But this …” His voice drops. “This hit a nerve I hadn’t expected.”
I watch his jaw tighten, the muscle jumping like he’s biting back something sharp.
“It reminded me of my sister.”
The air changes instantly.
“Molly,” he says. “She was eleven.”
My chest tightens painfully.
“Hodgkin lymphoma,” he adds, flat and clinical, the way doctors say things.
He swallows hard.
“I was sixteen,” he continues. “Aubrey was thirteen.”
His voice cracks, and my heart breaks at the restraint of it.
“She followed me everywhere,” he says. “Sat on my bed while I did homework. Snuck my headphones when she thought I wasn’t looking. Asked me a thousand questions about everything.”
A breath escapes him.
“She trusted me. Completely. I was her safe place.”
His shoulders tense as if the memory physically hurts.
“When she got sick, I told her it would be okay,” he says quietly. “I promised her.”
He drags a hand down his face, pressing his fingers into his eyes, like he’s trying to hold something back.
“My parents broke,” he says. “Not slowly. All at once.”
His words come faster now, uneven.
“My dad worked constantly. Nights. Weekends. He stopped talking unless he had to. My mom …” He shakes his head. “She disappeared. Stayed in her room. Cried. Slept. Cried again.”
His breathing grows shallow.
“So, I stepped in,” he says. “I made dinner. I made sure Aubrey got to school. I checked homework. I became the adult.”
At sixteen. The unfairness of it makes my chest ache.
