So it set the panic aside for later, like a coat to be collected on the way out, and it picked up the needle.

I had spent five years being told I couldn’t manage anything without Devon.

And here I was, alone, on a hospital floor, managing the single most important thing I would ever do — and doing it well, and doing it quietly, and doing it entirely without him.

Chapter 4 — He Heard Everything

At five in the morning I stood by my father’s bed and held his hand.

His fingers closed around mine — once.