In Sickness and in Lies novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: What Mom Wrote

I took the folder to the hospital cafeteria because I couldn't carry it into my mother's room.

It was two in the afternoon and nearly empty.

I spread the pages on a table by the window.

There were sixteen of them, one for each January.

Each had the same form and the same signature at the bottom.

Mine.

The pen strokes were all slightly different, and I remembered every day.

The year I had the flu.

The year he stood behind my chair and said, "Just sign, it's for the taxes, I'm late for a flight."

The year I signed on a train platform with the folder on my knee.

"You've stopped eating again," Bruce said.

He set a tray in front of me with a bowl of soup and a roll.

"I'm not hungry."

"It wasn't a question."

He sat down across from me, and I saw him look at the pages.

He did not touch them.

"Do you want me to look away?"

"No."

I pushed the top sheet across the table.

He read it slowly with his elbows on the table and his thumb against his jaw.

Then he turned over the next one, and the next.

"I'm a doctor," he said at last. "I can't tell you what this means."

"I know."

"I can tell you what a yellow tab means."

"What?"

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