She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Easter

I stayed on the hill until the taillights were gone.

The snow kept coming. It filled the three sets of footprints, and it filled the place where she had knelt.

I had a choice to make, and I had known it since the doorway of room six.

I could keep standing behind her for the rest of her life, saying things nobody heard.

Or I could stop.

I could not tell which of those was the kinder thing, so I went to find out.

The hospital was warm and bright and smelled of floor cleaner.

I found her on the third floor, in a small room with a window onto the parking lot.

The doctor had gone. Teddy was asleep upright in a plastic chair with his glasses pushed up on his forehead.

Arlene sat on the other side of the bed with her feet drawn up, awake, reading a magazine she was not looking at.

Miriam lay on her side under a thin blanket.

Her cuff was off and her wrist was bare on the pillow. The scar showed pale in the lamp.

She was asleep.

It was not the sleep of the floor in my old room. Her face was slack and her breathing was slow and ordinary.

On the tray beside her stood an empty paper cup, the kind the nurses use for pills.

Next to it was a glass of water drunk to the bottom.

I stood at the foot of the bed for a long time.

I had hoped for a miracle, and I got a paper cup.

I decided it was the better deal.

Arlene looked up.

Her eyes went to the foot of the bed, and she held there for a second.

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