Not a single wound she could dress, but a whole architecture of self-doubt, built one small dismissal at a time, that would have to be taken down the same way it went up: slowly, one believed sentence at a time.

Chapter 10 — Come to the Hospital

That evening, Martha called Mark, and she did not explain, and she did not accuse.

She told him to come to the hospital, now, and something in her voice must have carried, because he did not argue.

He arrived forty minutes later.

Martha watched him come into the consultation room and she watched him do the thing that ended, in a single motion, any small remaining hope she had been protecting.

He came in rushed and defensive, his eyes moving quickly around the room, and they landed on the medical chart sitting on Martha’s lap — and he did not go to his daughter.