Part 1 – Left in the Waiting Room
The last time my son said, “I’ll be right back,” he left me in a hospital waiting room with a plastic bracelet cutting into my thin wrist and no intention of ever returning. The man who finally came for me wasn’t family, but he knew my dead husband’s name.
I am eighty-six years old, and on the morning this happened, I still believed my son would never abandon me. He picked me up from my little apartment, helped me into his car, and talked about “just a quick set of tests” like we were going out for breakfast. I had my best blouse on, the one with the tiny blue flowers, and my sensible shoes, and I tried not to slow him down with my walker. He kept glancing at his watch, sighing like time itself was something I was stealing from him.
When we walked into the hospital, it smelled like disinfectant and overcooked vegetables. The woman at the desk took my information, printed a bracelet with “EVELYN CARTER” and my birth date, and snapped it onto my wrist with a practiced click. My son, Mark, answered most of the questions for me, talking fast about insurance and referrals while I stood there, feeling smaller than the clipboard. They told us to wait “until your name is called,” and we sat down in the row of orange plastic chairs by the television that was showing a cooking show with the sound turned off.
Mark’s leg bounced up and down so hard the seat shook. His phone lit up over and over, messages from work, little banners I couldn’t read from that far away. I tried to make small talk about the weather, about my neighbor’s new cat, about anything to fill the space, but he just nodded and said, “Yeah, Mom, sure,” without really hearing me. After a while he stood up, slid his phone into his pocket, and said, “I’m going to move the car before I get a ticket. I’ll be right back.”
Those four words, “I’ll be right back,” used to mean something. They meant your husband was running to the hardware store. They meant your child was taking the trash out. They meant life would continue exactly where you left it. I watched him walk past the automatic doors into the bright parking lot, one hand already reaching for his phone again. The doors whooshed shut behind him, and I never saw his car pull up again.
At first, I didn’t panic. Time stretches differently in hospitals; minutes feel like taffy being pulled. A nurse would call a name, a person would stand, disappear through a set of double doors, and the chairs would reshuffle. I kept expecting to see Mark’s familiar shoulders at the doorway, his hurried walk, his apologetic smile. Instead I watched the sunlight move across the tiles and stall in the late afternoon haze.
My back started to ache from the stiff chair, so I stood slowly and pushed my walker to the drinking fountain. The bracelet on my wrist scratched like an accusation. When I sat back down, my breathing was a little faster than I liked, and my heart made a nervous flutter that reminded me I was not twenty anymore. I checked the clock above the television. He had been “moving the car” for nearly two hours.
I told myself stories to keep the fear from blooming. Maybe he’d gotten an urgent call. Maybe there had been a mix-up with parking or a traffic jam. Maybe he was in another part of the hospital, talking to someone important about my test results. The stories worked for a while, until the waiting room emptied and refilled twice and the sky outside the big windows turned the flat gray of late afternoon.
A young woman in scrubs called, “Evelyn Carter?” and I raised my hand. She glanced around, then frowned. “Is your driver still here with you?” she asked.
I swallowed. My mouth tasted like metal. “He went to move the car,” I said. The nurse’s eyes flicked to the doors, then back to me, and I knew from her expression that she had heard that sentence before from other mouths, in other waiting rooms. “We’ll see what we can do,” she murmured, but she was called away before she could ask more questions.
The room grew quieter. The television switched to a talk show with bright smiles and louder colors that didn’t match the way my chest felt. My hands started to shake, so I folded them over the handles of my walker to hide it. I noticed, for the first time, that my purse was not on my lap. Mark had taken it “so you don’t forget it,” he’d said, and it had never made its way back to me. I reached instinctively toward where my phone should be, and my fingers met only the thin cotton of my skirt.
That was when the tears came. Not dramatic sobs, just a slow, humiliating leaking I couldn’t seem to stop. I turned my face away from the room, toward the vending machines, but the glass still threw my reflection back at me: white hair neatly curled, lipstick carefully applied, eyes red and wet like a child who had lost her mother in a grocery store. The thought hit me with such force that my breath hitched. I was the lost child now.
“Ma’am?” a voice said, low and careful. “You alright over there?”
I looked up. An older man stood a few feet away, a worn baseball cap pulled down over his lined forehead. The front of the cap had a faded patch with an eagle and some words I couldn’t quite make out. His jacket was frayed at the cuffs, his jeans clean but old, and at his side lay a big, sleepy dog with a gray muzzle and kind eyes. He held a paper cup of coffee in one hand, untouched.
“I’m fine,” I said automatically, the way women my age have been trained to say for decades, no matter what. My voice cracked on the last word.
He didn’t push, not right away. He glanced around the half-empty room like he was checking a perimeter he couldn’t help but scan. Then he eased himself into the chair one seat away from me, leaving a polite gap. The dog shifted, laid its head on his boot, and sighed. “Name’s Jim,” he said. “Jim Walker. I’m waiting on some test results upstairs. You look like you’ve been waiting a lot longer than I have.”
Something in his tone—steady, respectful, not pitying—loosened the knot in my throat. “My son went to move the car,” I heard myself say. “He’ll be right back.” The words sounded small and childish when I said them out loud.
Jim nodded slowly, like he was cataloging information. “How long ago?”
I looked at the clock again. I hated the number it showed. “A few hours,” I whispered. “He must’ve gotten… delayed.”
Jim’s jaw flexed, a muscle ticking near his temple. He didn’t argue with me. Instead, he stood, walked to the nurse’s station, and quietly asked a few questions I couldn’t hear. When he came back, his eyes were different—softer around the edges, harder in the middle. He sat down, leaning forward on his knees. “They say your son checked you in and left the building,” he said gently. “Nobody’s seen him come back.”
The room tilted for a moment. I clutched the walker until the metal dug into my palms. “He wouldn’t just leave me,” I said, because if I stopped saying it, it might be true.
Jim didn’t argue with that either. He reached into his jacket, pulled out a little packet of tissues, and offered one without comment. His sleeve rode up as he did, and that was when I saw it.
On the inside of his forearm, the skin was marked with ink that had blurred a little with age but was still readable. A unit insignia I knew by heart, even after all these years. And beneath it, in careful block letters, a name.
My husband’s name.
I stared at his arm, my heart pounding loud enough to drown out the television, the announcements, the squeak of nurses’ shoes on linoleum. “Where did you get that?” I whispered, my voice suddenly very small in the big, bright room.
Jim followed my gaze, looked down at his own skin like he’d forgotten what was there. When he looked back up, his eyes met mine, and something unspoken passed between us.
“That,” I said, my fingers trembling as I pointed, “is my husband’s name. The man they told me never made it home.”
Part 2 – The Name on His Arm
For a moment I forgot where I was.
The hospital chairs, the flickering television, the smell of disinfectant all blurred into the background as I stared at that name on Jim Walker’s arm.
My husband’s name.
Daniel Carter.
The letters were a little warped from age, but I would have known them in the dark.
“My husband served in that unit,” I said, my fingers trembling as I pointed. “They told me he never made it onto the helicopter.”
Jim’s eyes softened, and something old and heavy settled across his shoulders. He looked down at his arm, then back at me, like he was checking whether I was ready to hear what came next.
“I know,” he said quietly. “I was there.”
The words hit me harder than any test result ever could.
For decades, the war had been a collection of grainy photographs and half-finished sentences in my head, things Daniel never had the chance to explain. Now a stranger in a hospital waiting room was telling me he had watched that story in real time.
“Tell me,” I whispered. “Please.”
Jim glanced around, as if making sure no one would interrupt, then shifted in his chair so he was facing me more fully. His dog lifted its head, sensing the change in the air, then settled again with a low sigh.
“We were just kids,” he said. “Your husband was younger than I was. It was hot, the kind of heat that makes the air feel thick. We were supposed to hold that position until we got the signal to fall back. Only the signal came late.”
He didn’t raise his voice or dramatize anything.
He spoke like a man reciting a list he had gone over in his head every night for fifty years.
“Things went bad fast,” he continued. “We were ordered to pull out. I was in charge of getting my squad to the pickup point. Your husband was covering our flank. I shouted for him to move. He shouted back that he was right behind us.”
Jim swallowed, the muscles in his throat working.
“We made it to the clearing. The helicopter came in. We were under fire. They wanted us on board now. I… I couldn’t see him. They were yelling at me to climb in. I did. I looked back and he wasn’t there. By the time they went back for the others, it was…”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t have to. I had received the folded flag and the official words from a stranger in a pressed uniform.
Now I was hearing the unofficial version from a man whose voice still carried the echo of explosions.
“Why his name?” I asked softly. “On your arm?”
Jim exhaled slowly. “Because I never stopped hearing him say ‘I’m right behind you.’ Because I stepped onto that helicopter and he didn’t. Because I wanted to make sure I never forgot there was a man whose family never got him back.”
My eyes filled, but it wasn’t the sharp, panicked crying from earlier.
This was something deeper, older, like a river finally finding its way to the ocean.
“Daniel wrote me that he had a sergeant who ‘kept the kids alive,’” I said. “Said you were more stubborn than the heat.”
Jim blinked, a small, surprised smile ghosting across his face. “That sounds like him. He used to talk about you, you know. Said you made the best Sunday roast in three states. Said he was going to take you on a real vacation when he got home.”
“He never did,” I said, and the words came out flatter than I meant them to.
“I know,” Jim replied. “That’s on a list of things I can’t change, no matter how long I stare at the ceiling at night.”
We sat there for a while, two old people in a room designed for quick visits and forgotten conversations, holding a piece of history between us. The nurse called another name. A child dropped a toy and laughed when it rolled. Somewhere, a machine beeped steadily.
At last, Jim cleared his throat, practical again. “Mrs. Carter,” he said, “you can’t stay here all night waiting on someone who may not be coming back.”
“He’ll come,” I said out of habit. “He’s my son.”
He let the sentence sit in the air without arguing. Then he stood up, joints protesting, and walked back to the desk. I watched him speak to the woman there, watched her check a screen, then shake her head in that careful way people use when they don’t want to cause a scene.
When he came back, he spoke gently. “There’s no vehicle registered under your son’s name in the lot,” he said. “They don’t see him on the cameras coming back in.”
My chest tightened.
“He might have had to run an errand,” I said. “Maybe there was an emergency at work.”
“Maybe,” Jim agreed. “But either way, you need a way home. Do you have your phone on you?”
I patted my skirt, already knowing the answer. “He took it,” I said. “And my purse. So I wouldn’t lose them.”
Jim’s expression changed in a small, almost invisible way. It wasn’t quite anger, and it wasn’t surprise. It was the look of a man who had seen this pattern before and hated recognizing it.
“Alright,” he said slowly. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I’ve got my truck outside. It’s not pretty, but it runs. If you’re comfortable with it, I’ll drive you home.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” I protested automatically. “You don’t even know me.”
He shrugged one shoulder. “I knew your husband,” he said. “That’s more than I can say for half the people whose names are on my electric bill. And I’m not about to leave someone’s wife sitting in a waiting room with no ride.”
The dog wagged its tail as he stood.
I stared at my hands.
The sensible part of me recited every warning I had ever heard about getting into cars with strangers. Another part whispered the plain truth: the only person who should have been here had already left.
“I live in a senior building on Maple Ridge Lane,” I said finally. “Apartment 3B.”
“I’ll get the truck,” Jim replied. “You take your time standing up. No rush.”
He moved slowly beside me as I rose, positioning himself so if I stumbled, he could catch me without making a show of it. The dog padded along, staying just out of the way of my walker. The automatic doors opened for us, and warm air wrapped around my face like a blanket left in the sun.
His truck was as tired as we were. The paint was faded, the dashboard cracked, and there was a stack of old maps on the seat between us. He helped me in, buckled the belt without touching more than he had to, and drove like someone who knew what it felt like to be fragile.
We didn’t talk much on the way.
Sometimes silence is kinder than any attempt at conversation.
When we pulled up in front of my building, the porch light over the entrance was already on. Jim got out first, came around, and offered his arm for balance as I eased myself down. A neighbor glanced out the lobby window, took in my walker and Jim’s cap, and decided, wisely, not to make assumptions.
Inside, the hallway smelled like floor cleaner and microwave dinners. He walked me all the way to my door, carrying nothing but a small plastic bag with the hospital papers I’d been given.
“Thank you,” I said as I fumbled for my keys. My fingers didn’t feel like they belonged to me. “You’ve done more than enough.”
He hesitated, then reached into his jacket again. Instead of tissues, he pulled out an old, neatly folded business card. The edges were soft from being carried too long.
“My number’s on here,” he said. “If you ever need a ride, or if something doesn’t feel right, you call. Day or night. I don’t sleep much anyway.”
I took the card like it was made of glass. “Why?” I asked before I could stop myself. “Why would you help a stranger like this?”
Jim looked past me, into the dimness of my little apartment, then back at the long hallway behind us. For a second, I thought he might not answer.
“My mother died in a place like this,” he said quietly. “In a room at the end of a hallway. I was going to visit that week, but I got busy. There was always going to be time later. Then there wasn’t.”
The air between us felt heavy and thin at the same time.
“I can’t fix what I didn’t do for her,” he continued. “But I can make sure no one else’s mother sits alone in a waiting room if I can help it.”
He gave me a small nod, almost like a salute, then turned to leave. I watched him walk back down the hallway, his shoulders squared against a weight I couldn’t see.
Later that night, after I had locked the door and turned on every lamp in the living room just to chase away the memories, I slid the card under the little dish where I keep my keys. The numbers blurred slightly as my eyes filled again.
Across town, in a different tired building, Jim Walker unlocked his own mailbox. He pulled out a plain envelope from the management office, tore it open with a practiced thumb, and stood very still as he read.
“Notice of Non-Renewal,” it said at the top. “You must vacate the premises within thirty days.”
He stared at the paper for a long time, the hallway light buzzing faintly overhead, and realized that for all his talk about not leaving people behind, there was no one listed anywhere as his emergency contact.
Part 3 – Paperwork and Promises
The next morning, I woke up too early.
The digital clock beside my bed glowed 5:12 a.m., but my heart was already racing like I’d overslept something important.
For a moment I couldn’t remember why my chest felt tight. Then the images came back in jagged flashes: the waiting room, Mark walking away, the blank space where he should have been, the name on Jim’s arm.
I lay there listening to the building wake up. Pipes groaned somewhere in the walls. A neighbor turned on a television loud enough that I caught the rhythm of a theme song without the words. Outside, a delivery truck hissed and rumbled. It was all very normal, which only made yesterday feel more unreal.
At seven, someone knocked on my door. It was a polite knock, three small taps, not the impatient pounding of a family member with a spare key. I pulled my robe tighter and went to open it, bracing myself without even knowing for what.
It was the building manager, Mrs. Lewis, with her clipboard and tight ponytail. Beside her stood a woman I didn’t recognize, holding a worn leather folder. The stranger was in her forties, dressed in a plain blouse and slacks, the kind of clothes that let you walk into a lot of different homes without standing out.
“Morning, Mrs. Carter,” Mrs. Lewis said. “This is Ms. Hall from the county. She just needs a few minutes of your time, if that’s alright.”
County.
The word landed with a dull thud.
When you are old, “the county” rarely means good news.
“Of course,” I said automatically, stepping back. “Come in.”
They sat at my little kitchen table, where I had laid out my favorite floral placemats as if that would somehow make the conversation lighter. I poured coffee because that’s what you do when people visit, even when your hands are shaking.
“We received a call yesterday from the hospital,” Ms. Hall began gently. “They were concerned you might have been left there without a way home.”
The heat rose in my face. “I wasn’t abandoned,” I said too quickly. “My son just… had to step out.”
She nodded like she expected that answer. “I understand this may be uncomfortable, Mrs. Carter. Our job is simply to check in when someone raises a concern about an older adult. To make sure you’re safe. That you’re not being pressured into anything you don’t want.”
I thought of the plastic bracelet, the empty chair beside me, the missing purse. I also thought of Mark as a little boy, holding my hand too tight on his first day of school, asking if I would still be there when the bell rang.
“Mark is busy,” I said, more quietly now. “He has a job, a family. He can’t just drop everything because I walk a little slower than I used to.”
“Did he tell you he was leaving the building?” she asked.
I twisted the napkin in my fingers. “He said he was moving the car.”
“And how long was it before you left with Mr. Walker?”
I hadn’t realized anyone at the hospital had caught that part.
“Hours,” I admitted. “But you don’t understand. My son isn’t a bad person. He’s just under a lot of pressure. I don’t want to cause trouble for him.”
Ms. Hall made a note, then looked up, her face still calm. “My goal isn’t to cause trouble,” she said. “It’s to make sure your wishes are being respected. May I ask if you’re aware that your son has been speaking with some long-term care facilities?”
The room seemed to shrink.
I saw the words but couldn’t quite fit them into my life. “What do you mean?”
She opened her folder and slid a paper across the table. I recognized Mark’s looping signature at the bottom before I understood the rest. It was a copy of a form labeled something about “preliminary inquiry” and “placement availability” for a residence in a town I had never heard of. Two hours away.
“He didn’t tell me,” I said, and it came out more like a confession than a complaint.
“It’s not illegal for adult children to explore options,” Ms. Hall said carefully. “But according to this, he mentioned you were ‘no longer able to manage independently’ and that you agreed with the plan to move closer to his home. Is that accurate?”
My eyes burned. “I never said that. He mentioned a place with more help, once, when I fell in the bathroom last year. I told him I wanted to stay here as long as I could.”
Mrs. Lewis cleared her throat softly. “You’ve been one of our most stable tenants, Mrs. Carter,” she said. “You pay on time. You keep your place up. We don’t have any reports of safety issues beyond that one fall.”
Ms. Hall nodded. “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “There’s a difference between exploring resources and making decisions for someone without their full understanding.”
I understood the words.
What I didn’t understand was how we had gotten from “I’ll be right back” to “placement availability” without me in the room.
“Are you saying I could stop him?” I asked, the idea feeling too big to hold.
“I’m saying you have a say,” she replied. “You have the right to know what’s being planned. And if anyone is making choices that go against what you want, we can help you talk through it. We can’t tell you what to do. We can only make sure you’re heard.”
Heard.
It had been a long time since I felt like anyone really wanted to hear what an eighty-six-year-old woman preferred.
“I don’t want my son in trouble,” I repeated, softer now. “But I also don’t want to wake up one morning and find out my whole life has been packed into boxes while I was sedated for a test.”
Ms. Hall closed the folder. “That won’t happen today,” she said. “I’ll make sure the hospital note reflects that you got home safely with a trusted driver. I would recommend you have a direct conversation with your son about what you actually want. If you ever feel threatened or forced, you can call this number.”
She slid a card across the table.
A second card, on top of Jim’s card under my key dish.
After they left, the apartment felt both too small and too empty.
I sat there for a long time, staring at the form with Mark’s signature, remembering how his hand used to look wrapped around a crayon.
Around noon, my phone rang. I stared at his name on the screen before answering.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, sounding tired. “You got home okay yesterday?”
“Yes,” I said. “A man drove me. A friend of Daniel’s from the service.”
There was a pause. “You got in a car with a stranger?” he demanded. “Mom, that’s dangerous.”
“I was in a waiting room with no wallet, no phone, and no son,” I replied, surprised at how steady my voice sounded. “At some point, not doing anything felt more dangerous.”
He exhaled sharply. “Look, I’m sorry I had to leave. There was an issue at work, and then the traffic was a mess, and by the time I got back, you were gone. The hospital said you’d left with someone. I was worried sick.”
The words were right.
The timing was not.
“Why didn’t you call me?” I asked.
“I tried,” he said. “But you didn’t have your phone.”
Because you had it, I thought, but didn’t say.
“Mom, we have to talk about this living situation,” he continued. “Yesterday just proves you can’t be on your own anymore. I’ve been looking into a place where you’d have people around all the time. Nurses. Activities. It would be better for everyone.”
Better for everyone.
Everyone except the person who would have to leave her entire life behind.
“We’ll talk,” I said. “In person.”
After we hung up, I sat very still.
Then, almost without thinking, I reached for the key dish, slid out Jim Walker’s card, and traced the numbers with my thumb.
I didn’t call him.
Not yet.
Across town, in his own kitchen, Jim sat at his table with the eviction notice in front of him and a pad of paper to the side. He had written down three phone numbers for housing offices and circled the one he would call first.
The dog lay at his feet, ears twitching as if listening for something beyond his old man’s heartbeat.
Jim picked up the phone, then set it down again.
He realized there was not a single person he could list as someone who would be affected if he ended up on the street.
No emergency contacts.
No next of kin who answered.
And somewhere in the middle of that realization, his phone buzzed with a new voicemail—one he wouldn’t notice until later—that began with my thin, determined voice saying, “Mr. Walker… Jim… this is Evelyn. I think we both might need a little help.”
Part 4 – No One to Call
By the time I finally did dial his number, my fingers felt stiff and clumsy, like they belonged to someone much older than me.
The phone rang three times before he picked up.
“Walker,” he said, like he was still answering a radio.
“It’s Evelyn,” I said, suddenly unsure whether I was intruding. “Evelyn Carter. From the hospital.”
A pause, then a warm little chuckle. “I know who you are, ma’am. Not many people ask about that old tattoo anymore.”
“I hope I’m not calling at a bad time,” I said. “I just… the county came by. They said some things I can’t quite get my head around. And my son…”
My voice wobbled. I took a breath, annoyed at my own tears.
“Can you talk?” I finished.
“I’ve got time,” he said. “Plenty of time.”
He didn’t tell me he was sitting at his table with a notice that said he had none.
I didn’t tell him I was sitting in a chair that might not be mine much longer.
We talked for a while about practical things that didn’t feel practical at all.
I told him about the visit from the county worker, the form with Mark’s signature, the mention of a place two hours away. He listened without interrupting, the way people do when they’ve spent a lifetime learning that there’s more to the story than what comes out in the first sentence.
“Do you want to move to a place like that?” he asked when I’d finished.
“No,” I said immediately, surprising myself with how sure it sounded. “I want to stay in my own bed. I want to go to the same grocery store where the clerk knows I like the brown bread. I want to sit on the same bench outside the building and know that the tree next to it is mine to watch in all four seasons.”
“Then that matters,” he said. “People forget that the small things hold a whole life together.”
“Do we get a say?” I asked. “People like us?”
He was quiet for a moment. “We should,” he said at last. “Doesn’t always feel like we do. But I’ve seen what happens when people give it up without a fight. They disappear before anyone notices they’re gone.”
His words settled over me like a blanket and a warning.
“What about you?” I asked. “You sounded… tired. Are you alright?”
He hesitated. I could picture him looking at the paper on his table, the dog at his feet, the same four walls he’d been staring at for years.
“Landlord’s not renewing my lease,” he said finally. “They’re renovating. Raising the rent. Nothing personal, just numbers on a page. I’ve got thirty days to figure out where an old man and an older dog go when nobody’s holding a spot for them.”
The idea of Jim without a place, of the dog without a patch of sun to sleep in, made my chest ache. “Don’t you have family?”
“Once,” he said. “My daughter and I… let’s just say we’ve both been too proud and too hurt for too long. Pride’s a funny thing. It keeps you standing up straight while everything around you falls over.”
I thought of Mark then.
Of all the times I’d told myself he was “just stressed” instead of admitting he might be choosing convenience over kindness.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He cleared his throat. “I’ve got some calls to make. There are lists for people like me. Sometimes they move fast. Sometimes they don’t. I’ll land somewhere.”
The way he said it, I wasn’t sure he entirely believed his own words.
After we hung up, I went to my tiny living room window and looked down at the parking lot. Mrs. Lewis was standing with another tenant, pointing at a patch of cracked pavement where the paint for the parking lines had faded. They laughed about something. Life went on.
I shuffled back to my kitchen table, where the county card lay next to Jim’s.
Two pieces of paper, two very different kinds of help.
I didn’t dial either number again that afternoon.
Instead, I dialed my son.
“Hey, Mom,” Mark answered, his voice tight. “I’m in between meetings. Everything okay?”
“I had a visitor from the county,” I said, skipping the polite preface. “She showed me some papers with your signature.”
He sighed. “Mom, I was going to talk to you about that. I just wanted to make sure there were options before I worried you.”
“You told them I agreed,” I said. “I didn’t.”
“I knew you’d resist at first,” he replied. “Everyone does. But yesterday showed me that you can’t be left alone in places like hospitals. What if something had happened? It’s not safe.”
“It wasn’t safe because you left,” I said before I could swallow the words.
Silence stretched between us, tight as a wire.
“That’s not fair,” he said finally. “I had a situation at work. I thought it would be ten minutes. Then there was an issue with the car. I was going to come back.”
“How long were you gone?” I asked.
He didn’t answer.
“Mark,” I said, softer now, “I’m not your project. I’m your mother. If you think I need more help, we can talk about it. But I won’t be shipped off to someplace far away because it fits better with your calendar.”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for everyone,” he insisted. “You think I want to be the bad guy here?”
“I think you’re tired,” I said. “And I think sometimes tired people make choices that hurt and then call it ‘what’s best.’”
He exhaled. “We’ll talk this weekend,” he said. “Face to face. Please don’t overthink this before then.”
After we hung up, I sat for a long time, listening to the hum of my refrigerator and the faint sound of a television through the wall.
I thought about Jim, about the way his voice had gone quiet when he talked about his mother. About how he carried my husband’s name on his skin like a promise he hadn’t been able to keep.
By early evening, my body reminded me that I am still made of bones and joints, not just worries. I went to the bathroom to take my pills. On the way back, my foot caught the edge of a rug.
For a heartbeat, I felt that awful sensation of the floor rushing up to meet me.
I grabbed for the doorway, managed to catch myself, and stood there, heart pounding, gripping the wood so hard my knuckles went white.
I pictured another fall, one that wouldn’t stop halfway.
I pictured Mark using that as proof that he’d been right all along.
When my hands finally stopped shaking, I went back to the kitchen and picked up Jim’s card again.
This time, I didn’t just trace the numbers.
I dialed them.
The phone rang once, twice, then clicked. There was a shuffling sound, and when he spoke, his voice was strained and breathless.
“Jim?” I said. “It’s Evelyn.”
“Ma’am,” he said, forcing a little humor into the word. “I was hoping you’d call again. I, uh… might actually need a favor this time.”
My stomach dropped. “What’s wrong?”
“I was up on a chair trying to fix a light,” he said. “It was a stupid idea. Missed the last step coming down. I didn’t hit my head, but my leg’s not cooperating, and the dog’s no help when it comes to lifting. I’ve been sitting on the floor for a while deciding whether it’s pride or common sense that wins today.”
I didn’t hesitate.
“Give me your address,” I said. “Stay where you are. I’m coming.”
He laughed once, incredulous. “Ma’am, you can’t possibly—”
“I sat alone in a waiting room yesterday,” I cut in. “I won’t sit alone in my apartment while someone who carried my husband’s name on his arm can’t stand up off his own floor. Tell me where you live, Jim. Then we’ll see which one of us is actually helpless.”
