What We Choose novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: Visiting Hours

Nash saw Colter and stopped walking.

The balloons kept going for a second and bumped into the back of his head.

His mother didn't stop at all.

"There she is!" She came down the row of recliners like it was a receiving line. "Our brave girl!"

Patients turned their heads. An old man two chairs down pulled his blanket up to his chin.

Mrs. Penhallow set the casserole on my tray, right on top of Colter's crackers.

"Chicken and rice. Nothing spicy. I looked it up."

The woman with the phone circled around for a better angle.

"Get her face," Mrs. Penhallow murmured. "And Nash's."

Nash came to the side of my chair and knelt, the balloons bobbing over us.

"Hey, babe," he said, gently, for the camera. "I'm here. I'm not going anywhere."

He reached for my hand.

I put it in my lap.

"Stop filming," I said to the admin.

She smiled at me the way you smile at a toddler. "It's just for the group, sweetie. Everybody's been asking how you're doing."

In the recliner next to mine, an old woman with a silk scarf tied over her bald head had been asleep since I sat down.

She opened one eye.

"Young lady," she said to the admin, "if you point that thing at me, I'll put it somewhere the nurses will have to remove it."

The admin lowered the phone an inch.

Nash was still kneeling. He looked up at Colter, finally.

"What are you doing here?"

"Keeping her company," Colter said. "You were busy."

"She's my fiancée."

"She gave your ring to your mother," Colter said. "In a glass."

Mrs. Penhallow patted Nash's shoulder. "Sweetheart, ignore him. Dessa isn't thinking clearly. It's the poison they're giving her. It goes to the brain."

"It's my first dose," I said. "It's been in me for an hour."

"See?" she said to the room. "Confused."

I looked around.

Twenty recliners. Twenty people hooked to poles. Nurses at the station. A man with a mop by the door.

Every one of them was listening.

Fine.

"I'd like everyone to know something," I said, loud enough for the far end of the room. "This man has just offered me a ring in a chemo chair."

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