Let Me Have a Turn

And in that garden, weeping into my hair, whispering that he was scared, he finally found it.

It was the bravest I ever saw him, and there was not a scalpel or an operating room anywhere in sight.

There was only a frightened man, at long last, letting himself be held.

Chapter 18 — Let Me Have a Turn

I pulled back, just far enough to look into his tear-stained face, and I reached down and took his trembling right hand, the hand that had betrayed him, the hand he had spent six months hiding from everyone who loved him, and I held it in both of mine, and I lifted it gently and pressed it flat against my cheek.

“Listen to me,” I said.