Days, perhaps. A week, if they were lucky.
I stared at the floor tiles while he spoke because looking at his face would have made it real too quickly.
When he left, Ellen wiped her eyes and said, “She’s been weaker than she admitted on the phone.”
That hurt in a fresh way.
“Did she know how bad her heart was?” I asked.
Ellen nodded. “She knew enough to take her medications, but we didn’t know it had gotten so bad.”
I thought of all our evening calls then.
All the tenderness in them and the urgency I had mistaken for simple late-life honesty.
She had probably felt that time was narrowing and still waited for me to come on my own terms.
I loved her more for that and hated the world a little.
So I stayed.
I rented a room at a motel near the hospital and spent every day in Margaret’s room.
