I steadied myself against that feeling and turned toward the thing that mattered, which was not the money and not the marriage and not any of the strangeness of how I had come to be standing there, but only my son, small in a hospital gown, about to be made well.

While they prepared my son for his operation, Arthur and I sat together in a quiet private waiting room.

He should have been at home, resting his own failing heart, but he had insisted on coming, and I was glad of it, because I do not know how I would have borne those hours alone.

We did not talk much.

There was not much to say that the waiting did not say better.