We teach them that courage means not flinching, not weeping, not needing anyone, holding the line alone no matter the cost.

And there is a kind of courage in that, the courage of the operating room, where Marcus had always excelled.

But there is another kind, rarer and harder and far less celebrated, and it is the courage it takes to be seen at your weakest, to let the people who love you watch you be afraid, to set down the armor and say out loud I cannot carry this alone.

Marcus had spent his whole life fluent in the first kind of courage and terrified of the second.