Six weeks since the oncologist used the word *stable* twice in one appointment and I cried in the parking garage in a way I hadn’t cried in the exam room.

I had a job by then. Three days a week at the cancer center in Kansas City, in the office they call Patient Navigation, which is a soft name for the work of standing between sick people and the paperwork trying to kill them a second time.

I made copies. I sat with women while they were on hold with insurance companies.

I learned which pharmacies stocked the anti-nausea medication that actually worked and which ones would tell you it was backordered for a month.

Sonya, who hired me, told me on my second day that the best navigators are always former patients and the worst thing about that is why.

Gavin was at the shop most days until six. He and Wyatt had four employees by then and a contract with a company that made grain elevator parts, and he came home with his forearms scratched up and slept like a man who had used his body, which he had missed doing.