Does she care?
“And?” I ask.
“She’s in a surgical seminar,” Mom says. “She got in at the last minute, and it’s a huge opportunity for her. It’s a big deal, Henry.”
I stare at nothing in particular. “Oh.”
“She said she’s so happy you’re okay. She asked me to tell you she’s thinking of you. Then I texted her that you were smiling and that Zach sends his love.”
I scrunch my forehead. “What? Why’d you say that?”
Mom sighs. “I don’t know. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I don’t know why you wanted to call her. Why you’d want her to know.”
“She knows why,” I say.
“Care to tell me?” she asks. “Please, sweetheart. I want to help.”
That’s my mom. She’d move the earth for any one of her kids if she could. Even the one she didn’t actually give birth to.
But she can’t help with this.
I let out a breath. It isn’t disappointment exactly that fills the space. It’s something slower and more honest, the kind of grief that doesn’t need to make noise to exist.
“She’s not coming,” I say.
“She can’t,” Mom replies. “Not today. Maybe later.”
I nod once and stare past her at the narrow window.
“Your father’s getting coffee.” Mom reaches for my hand and rubs her thumb over my knuckles the way she did when I broke my wrist sliding into home plate in a sixth-grade baseball game. “You want me to tell him anything?”
“Nothing to tell.”
Dad appears in the doorway and fills it across the shoulders the way he always has. He holds two coffee cups. “You look better.”
“Feel better,” I rasp.
It’s not a lie. Physically I feel a lot better.
“We’re taking you home tomorrow if you don’t do anything stupid between now and then,” he says.
“Working on not being stupid,” I say.
“Good. Zach has been whining and scampering since the accident. When he’s not doing that, he’s on your bed. He’s not eating.”
“He needs to eat,” I say.
“He will,” Dad says. “When you get home. He’ll be okay. That dog’s a damned hero, Henry.”
Mom’s phone buzzes. She glances at it and then up at me. “It’s Angie. We finally got through to her and Jason. She wants an update. You feel up to talking to her?”
Ugh. Not really. The only person I want to talk to is Tabitha, but that’s clearly not going to happen.
“Just text her,” I tell Mom. “Tell her my throat is hurting but that I love her and to not worry about me. To have a good time on her honeymoon.”
Mom nods and types.
The nurse comes in with a tablet and a smile. She checks vitals and asks me to rate my pain and tells me to put in my order for lunch.
