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Then she closed the door before I could argue and started walking her mom to the automatic doors.

I waited for a minute, watching her go like she might spin around and change her mind.

She didn’t.

I know I should have been relieved that I’d just gotten my day back, but I wasn’t. Mike had seemed adamant that he didn’t want her alone. It didn’t feel right leaving.

Part of me considered parking and going in anyway, but on the chance she didn’t want my company, I opted not to. I didn’t know her well enough, didn’t want to force my presence on her.

I put the car in drive and was almost to the street when I realized Nancy left her bag in the trunk. I didn’t have Larissa’s number to text her to meet me out front. I had no choice. I parked and went in.

2

LARISSA

The second they took Mom back to the OR, I burst into tears again.

I’d been crying most of last night and part of this morning. Mom too.

Dad had used my Social Security number to open credit cards in my name. I found out because they’d garnished the tax return I’d been waiting on to fix my car. I got the email yesterday.

Mom wasn’t working, and we were barely making the rent. I didn’t know how we were going to pay these medical bills, and now I didn’t even know how I was going to afford to get my car out of the shop. I couldn’t take any more time off work. I was living paycheck to paycheck, doing odd jobs just to afford groceries.

I’d babysat last night until midnight for the lady upstairs to make twenty extra dollars. I put him to bed at nine and fell asleep on the sofa, and he pried my eyelid open to tell me he woke up and drew a picture of me—on the wall of his room with his mom’s makeup. I laughed because it was so not funny, it was.

I felt so bad for the mess, I didn’t even take the money.

I pulled my legs into my chest on the gray waiting room chair and put my forehead to my knees.

I didn’t want to be alone at the hospital. I wanted to go home.

I wanted to put on my ratty emotional support grandma underwear and take off my bra and climb into bed and sleep until it was over. I wanted to order delivery food I couldn’t afford so I could eat something I didn’t have to cook and most of all I wanted someone else to figure it out. The brain energy it took for me to just do the basics at this point was more than I had to spare.

And on top of all of it, according to Mom, I probably smelled like soup.

I cried harder.

I was weeping softly into my knees, grateful that I somehow had the whole surgical waiting room to myself to sob in peace, when someone cleared their throat. My head shot up. Chris stood in the entrance, holding Mom’s bag.

When he’d showed up this morning instead of Mike, I’d almost broken down right then and there.

I didn’t like to ask for help, it had taken a lot for me to do that. Then Mike sent Chris instead of coming himself.

I could barely process it. I felt horrible that a man who barely knew me had to wake up so early to come do this. I was embarrassed by Mom’s nervous word vomit in the car, I was upset that Mike made us an inconvenience for somebody else, and I was baffled at why he hadn’t given me a heads-up and sent Chris unannounced.

I liked Mike. He was funny and distracting, and I’d needed that more than I’d realized with the last few months being so draining. But after what happened this morning, I was seriously questioning whether I should keep dating him.

I probably wasn’t being fair. He had a migraine. Maybe it took everything he had just to call Chris and get him to come instead. Maybe he was in excruciating pain and looking at his phone was debilitating. But something felt off about it, and I was too emotionally and mentally exhausted to examine it. I’d barely eaten last night, I was shaky from low blood sugar, I had a caffeine headache creeping in, and I was likely not thinking rationally, but my knee-jerk reaction to Mike not showing was to just break things off because I did not have the capacity to deal with unreliable people right now.

Chris stared at me for another few seconds. Then he grabbed a handful of tissues from the box on the coffee table, walked across the room, and sat down next to me.

“Here.” He put the Kleenex into my hands.

I took them. “Thanks.” I wiped my nose.

“Are you okay?” he asked gently.

I nodded at my hands in my lap.