She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Ten Days at the Table

I walk into my sister's office in front of thirty employees, trade ten days at her table for the hospice staying open, and Colby tells me he has twenty-eight days left.

On Thursday morning I put on the one good coat I had left and had Arlene drive me downtown.

The Ellingham Holdings lobby had a new white stone floor, and my cane squeaked on it.

The guard behind the desk looked at my coat, then my face, then the cane.

"Cedric Ellingham," I said. "I'm here to see my sister."

His eyebrows moved. He picked up the phone and listened for a moment.

"Forty-first floor, sir. She says to send you straight up."

Arlene stayed in the lobby with her bag of medications on her knee. "Don't fall," she said.

"I'll try to fall on someone important."

The elevator opened onto an open floor with thirty desks and glass offices along the walls.

Every head turned.

Miriam stood at the window of her corner office with her arms folded.

She did not come out. She waited for me to cross the whole floor.

It took a while, and nobody helped me. Nobody in that room had any idea who I was.

"Cancel the eviction," I said when I reached her door.

"Sign the form."

"No."

"You walked in here on a cane to say no a second time?"

"I walked in here so thirty people can hear you answer."

Behind me the typing slowed down.

"You are about to put eleven dying people on the street," I said. "Their crime is living next door to a man who won't hand you his liver."

"Come into my office," she said, very low.

"Here is fine."

A door opened down the hall, and Colby came out of a meeting.

He had put on a good sweater, and it hung off his shoulders. The whites of his eyes were yellow.

"Cedric?" His face lit up. "Cedric. God, look at you."

He crossed the floor with his arms open and hugged me before I could step back.

He smelled of cologne and hospital soap.

"Don't shout at him, Miri," Colby said over my shoulder. "He's sick. Look at him."

Every person on that floor watched the kind brother.

Miriam's face softened when she looked at him. I knew that look. It had been mine until I was thirteen.

Colby let go of me and kept one hand on my arm.

"Here are my terms," I said to Miriam.

She did not answer, so I went on.

"I'll live at the house for ten days. I'll sit at your table and I'll listen to anything you want to say."

"I won't sign anything. At the end you can ask me again."

"The hospice stays exactly as it is, in writing, today. And Arlene comes with me."

Colby's hand tightened on my arm, just slightly.

"Why would you do that?" Miriam said.

"Because you won't hear me any other way."

"You think ten days at my table will soften me."

"I think ten days at your table is the only time you'll sit still while I talk."

She looked at the floor of employees who had stopped pretending to work. She looked at me.

I could see her do the math. Ten days was nothing. A dying man would be easier to move in his own childhood house.

"Fine," she said.

So I said I would come home.

She took out her phone and typed with her thumbs, in front of everyone.

Then she turned the screen toward me.

It was a message to her lawyer. The Silverbrook hospice lease is unchanged. Confirm in writing by noon.

She had already pressed send.

"Ten days," she said. "Then you give me your answer, and it will be the right one."

"Let him sit down, Miriam," Colby said. "He's gray."

He pulled a chair out from the nearest desk himself. I sat.

"Do you know what the surgeons told me?" he said, lowering himself onto the edge of the desk beside me.

"No."

"Twenty-eight days." He smiled. "After that my body is too far gone for any liver they could find."

"So you'd better hurry up and love me," he said, and Miriam laughed, shaky, because she thought it was a joke.

I looked at my own hands.

The doctors had given me three weeks, maybe less.

"Twenty-eight days," I said.

"We both have a clock." Colby patted my shoulder, in exactly the place where Miriam had gripped me.

He pressed down until it hurt.

"I'm so glad you're coming home, brother," he said. "I'll have the room ready."

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