“I eat what’s in front of me.” She shifted herself an inch.

“That’s how I ended up with two husbands and a bad hip.”

I laughed, and then I put my hand over my mouth, because laughing in a hospital room feels like knocking something over.

“Go home Sunday,” she said.

“Not tonight.

Tomorrow, after church, the way you used to.”

I stayed until the shift change at three and then sat in the parking lot for twenty minutes with the engine off before I turned the key.

Sunday morning I made the coffee and carried a book into the living room, one I had already read twice and couldn’t remember the middle of.