Page 38 of Coming Home

Not today. I couldn't carry her sorrow along with my own.

I turned the corner toward the main elevator bank and nearly ran flat into a man coming from the opposite direction. He was an older guy, his white cane sweeping a practiced, rhythmic arc across the linoleum, his left hand trailing the wall molding. I swerved hard to miss him, my balance failing as my foot caught the edge of a trash bin, and my shoulder slammed into the drywall hard enough to rattle my jaw.

"Sorry," I muttered, my voice rough. "I'm sorry, sir. I didn't see you."

The man paused, a gentle, sightless smile touching his mouth. "No harm done, son." He kept moving, his cane resuming its steady tap-tap against the tile, and he took the corner without slowing, without a hand out for the wall, moving through the dark like it held nothing he hadn't already mapped. I couldn't imagine ever owning it that way. He didn't need my apology. He didn't need my pity. He just needed me to get out of his way.

My palms were slick with cold sweat. The corridor was suddenly doing something terrifying—stretching and compressing in my vision, the white walls breathing in and out like a living lung. The fluorescent fixtures above were simultaneously blinding and murky, shifting between a harsh white glare and a dark, amber wash.

My vision was strobing at the margins.

I reached the elevator doors. Hit the down arrow.

Leaned the full weight of my spine against the wall.

The floor numbers above the door were melting, the digital red display blurring into an unreadable smear of light.

I abandoned the elevator and took the concrete stairs instead. Four flights. My right hand was locked onto the steel railing the entire way down, gripping the metal so hard the edge bit into my palm. One flight. Two. Three.

I hit the ground floor. Pushed through the heavy fire exit. The midday California sunlight hit my face like an attack of white noise—so brilliant, so absolute that I stumbled sideways.

I leaned hard against the brick, my chest heaving, my black shirt damp with sweat despite the cool breeze coming off the asphalt. My hands were shaking. Both of them. I pressed my palms flat against the rough mortar and forced myself to count the breaths.

One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six.

I was going to pass out. I could feel the gray perimeter closing in on my consciousness, the asphalt tilting up at an impossible angle, the rough brick sliding against the fabric of my jacket as my weight shifted toward the dirt.

Then a hand touched my arm.

Small. Warm. Utterly solid. Five slender fingers pressing into the muscle of my forearm with a fierce pressure that cut clean through the static in my brain.

And a voice. Clear, soft.

"Ralph?"

CHAPTER 14

Emma

He was the absolute last person I expected to intercept at the clinic.

I had stepped out of Dr. Sanders' office only ten minutes prior, the printed breakdown of my bloodwork already folded into a tight, hidden square inside my leather purse. For the first time in three years, the news hadn't been a quiet devastation. Inflammation markers down. Kidney function stable. Anti-dsDNA titers dropping. We were looking at a significant reduction in my daily medication—a step down from the high-dose corticosteroids that had held my body hostage for so long.

It was the first real sign of clinical remission. Dr. Sanders had told me gently, the relief plain on her face after years of watching me fight this disease at its worst, and I'd walked out of her office still barely able to believe it: I was getting my body back.

I was standing on the curb near the main canopy, my thumb blindly scrolling for a ride-share app on my phone, when I caught sight of him.

He was leaned heavily against the rough brick exterior about thirty feet down the walkway, and my very first instinct was a sharp jolt that something was profoundly wrong.

"Ralph?"

His head jerked toward the sound of my voice. But his eyes didn't lock onto me. They swept across my general coordinate, searching the air, before finally fixing on my face a half-second too late—like a high-end lens struggling to autofocus on a moving target. His pupils were blown.

The intense blue of his irises had been reduced to a microscopic ring around two deep, black pools of adrenaline.

My phone went instantly into my pocket. I cleared the distance between us in four frantic strides.