Her eyes flicked toward the nurses’ station, then back to me. There was fear in her expression — not of me, but something deeper, something she’d been carrying alone for far too long.

“Please don’t make a scene,” she said.

“I’m not making a scene.” My voice cracked despite my effort. “Sophie, are you sick?”

She swallowed hard, her fingers curling around the edge of the plastic chair. “They found a mass,” she said quietly.

For a second I didn’t understand. It landed too gently for something so terrifying. “A mass?”

She nodded. “They don’t think it’s cancer, but it was dangerous enough that they wanted to operate. I had surgery yesterday.”