She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Second Sunday

Colby went into surgery at four in the morning.

Our uncle stayed in the family room with a paper cup of tea.

Miriam signed the last form and left the hospital without telling anyone where she was going.

I went with her, because there was nowhere else for me to go.

She drove to Cedar Street, parked at the curb and sat in the car until it got light.

Arlene found her on the bench by the side door, where the patients smoked when the director wasn't looking.

"You look like you walked here from the county line," Arlene said, and sat down beside her.

"Colby has a new liver," Miriam said. "It's going well, they think."

"Good."

"I didn't want to be in the room when he woke up."

"Then you shouldn't be," Arlene said.

They sat. A bus went by. The woman in room two was singing something from behind the window.

"Tell me what he was like here," Miriam said. "Not the dying. The rest."

Arlene took her glasses off her head and cleaned them on her scrub top.

"He was funny," she said. "That's what nobody warns you about. He was the funniest man on the hall."

"I don't remember him funny."

"He was funny the second Sunday he was here. I'll tell you about that one."

On the second Sunday, I had made Arlene a deal.

I would eat the whole breakfast tray, and she would drive me to Pine Road.

She drove a rusted grey hatchback with a cracked dashboard, and she kept a thermos of coffee between the seats.

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