But I was no longer doing it for his money, and there is a world of difference between those two things.

And every single time I stood to leave, no matter how the visit had gone, no matter whose name she had called me, she would grip my hand with a strength that surprised me in someone so frail, and she would not want to let go, and quiet tears would slip down her soft, creased face.

She never made a scene of it.

She just held on with a grip that had far more strength in it than the rest of her frail body seemed to hold, and cried without sound, as if each goodbye cost her something she could not afford to lose, and I would sit back down and stay another ten minutes, and another, until the nurses gently reminded me it was time, and even then I left with the feeling that I was abandoning something precious in that quiet room.