Valerie Came Home From Deployment to Find Her Twelve-Year-Old Daughter in Intensive Care
“The one by the window.
I put the blue quilt on it, the one with the torn corner.”
Her eyelids fluttered.
Not open, not closed.
Just a quick shiver of movement beneath the skin.
“Elena’s thermos is still in my duffel,” I said.
“Chicken soup.
She’ll make me eat it if I don’t pour it out first.”