Chapter 8: The Gifts

On the third morning my mother swept a basket of fruit across the hallway floor with her foot.

"We don't want your gifts!" she shouted through the open door. "Take them and go!"

Lorna was crouched outside my room again.

She had been there each day since I signed, at the same hour, with something in her arms.

Yesterday it was a tin of expensive tonic.

The day before it was lilies, which I'm allergic to, and which she should have remembered.

Now she gathered the apples one at a time and stacked them in the basket and set it neatly against the wall.

She didn't try to come in.

She didn't answer my mother.

She just stayed there on her heels, looking at the floor, until my father came to the door with his arms folded and his jaw set.

"Visiting hours are over," he said.

"I know," Lorna said. "I'll come back tomorrow."

My mother slammed the door.

"A dog would have given up," she muttered. "She's doing it on purpose so you'll feel sorry for her."

"I don't feel sorry for her."

"Good."

She sat down hard in the visitor's chair and glared at the wall.

Later that night, Hannah came in to check my line.

She took my pulse, and her fingers were warm on my wrist.

I noticed that.

I noticed the freckles across her nose and a small scar on her chin, and the way she counted with her lips moving a little.

I noticed it, and I put it down to the morphine.

"Your color's better," she said. "Mrs. Brandow told me she's keeping a cake in the fridge for me."

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