Chapter 20: Four Minutes

Jo's POV

The waiting room on the third floor had one clock, and it was wrong by six minutes.

I knew because I had checked it against my phone forty times.

My mother sat beside me in her good coat, with her handbag in her lap and her hands around it.

She had not said anything for an hour. That was not like her.

Bea had gone to stand at the double doors to the operating wing, and nobody had made her leave.

At nine-fifteen the doors banged open.

A nurse ran past with a crash cart, and a second came behind her, and I was on my feet.

"Jo," my mother said.

"That's his hall."

"You don't know."

"Mom, that is his hall."

I went for the doors.

A security guard stepped in front of me, a big, kind man with a gray mustache.

"Ma'am, I can't let you."

"My husband is in there."

"I know. I'm sorry. I can't."

I shoved him with both hands, and he did not move.

I heard a voice behind me, loud and breaking, and realized it was mine.

"Damian! Damian!"

Arms came around my middle and pulled me back.

They were my mother's arms, strong from forty years of dough.

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