He Missed Our Daughter's Birthday Again novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: The Floor Outside

At ten past five in the morning I looked through the narrow window in my door and saw my husband sitting on the floor.

He was on the linoleum in the corridor with his back against the wall and his coat still on.

His knees were drawn up, and his head was in his hands.

The nurse's station was thirty feet away, and nobody had told him to move.

He didn't know I could see him.

I lay with the blood pressure cuff squeezing my arm and watched him for a full minute.

I had never seen Roderick sit on a floor.

His shoulders were shaking.

I pressed the call button and asked the night nurse to let him in.

He came through the door slowly, one hand on the frame.

His eyes were swollen.

"Leah."

"Sit down."

He took the chair by my bed and didn't touch me.

"My phone was off," he said. "The unit asked everyone to silence them near the monitors, and I switched it off and didn't turn it back on. I turned it on at four. I had fifty-one messages. Yours were at the top."

"I called you four times."

"I know."

"Then I called you from the car. And my sister called you from hers."

"I know."

"I called you from the kitchen table with my hands so swollen I couldn't turn my ring."

He looked at the ring.

It sat on my finger with the skin puffed around it.

"They had to cut it off me at midnight," I said. "I mean they wanted to. I wouldn't let them."

He made a noise I had never heard from him.

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