Seven Times They Chose Him. The Last Time, They Lost Me novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Visiting Hours

Aunt Dot drove us to Columbus without saying one word about my mother.

She gripped the wheel and watched the road, and twice I heard her breathe out through her nose.

"You don't have to go in," she said, in the hospital garage. "If you want to turn around, we turn around."

"If it's real, I have to."

"Okay."

"And if it's not real?"

She looked at me for a while.

"Then you still get to decide," she said. "Not her."

Dylan's room was on the fourth floor, with a balloon tied to the bed rail and a monitor beeping above it.

He lay against three pillows in a gown too big for him, with wires taped to his chest.

My father stood at one side of the bed with his hand on Dylan's shoulder, and my mother sat on the other with a phone in her lap.

A small crowd of people from our church was crammed in the corner, holding a card the size of a pizza box.

"Zack!" Dylan said.

His whole face lit.

"You came. Dad, he came."

"Of course he came." Dad's voice boomed. "That's what brothers do. Come here, buddy."

He pulled me into a hug that smelled like hotel soap and airplane.

"I'm glad you're okay," I told Dylan over my father's arm.

"I'm better now."

My mother raised her phone.

"Everybody squeeze in. This is so beautiful. The page is going to love it."

She took four photographs of me standing next to Dylan's bed with my blue cast.

I smiled in all of them, because I knew how.

Then a young woman in a white coat came in, holding a tablet, and said, "Good, the whole family's here. Mr. and Mrs. Houghton, I have the results from last night."

"Is it his valve?" my mother said, too fast.

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