Fine, Grey’s Anatomy.

The TV Guide debate was what was on her mind as she walked by so many rooms, all of which had glass doors that were shut, most of which had drapes pulled closed for privacy. From time to time, however, she was able to see inside to family members at a bedside, cloistered around a very sick patient, holding hands. Holding each other.

Inevitably, the ill or dying were hooked up to a lot of machines.

What did she expect, though. This wasn’t even a general floor. You were not here unless you were really, really sick.

Room 1313 was down at the end, on the left.

And she had to stop at 1311 for a minute and catch her breath.

Thank God she had taken Trez’s vein. She wouldn’t have had the strength for this otherwise.

Clearing her throat in anticipation of saying something coherent, she walked forward… and looked in through parted drapes.

Therese covered her mouth with her hand as her eyes filled with tears.

Her mahmen was lying so small and pale in a bed that was surrounded by equipment. The males of the family, son and hellren, were sitting on either side of her, each cradling one of her hands in their palm. The arrangement of them all, the pervasive sadness, the obvious sickness… they formed a tableau of grief and suffering, the emotions and dying process eternal even in the face of so much technology and medical advancement.

Standing on the outside looking in, Therese greeted the three people she knew best in the world by reacquainting herself with their appearances, overlaying the present sight of them across the composite memory of the decades she’d known them. Her father looked older, much older. His hair, once salt-and-pepper gray, was now fully white, and his face was lined deeply, not wrinkles any longer but gouges around his mouth and at the corners of both his eyes. He had lost a great deal of weight, his plaid shirt hanging off his shoulders, his khaki pants pooling at his feet, and maybe that was part of the aging thing. But he was also exhausted, great bags under his eyes, his skin sallow and pasty.

Her brother, on the other hand, looked bigger and more vital. Gareth had nearly shaved off his hair, and his throat, shoulders, and chest had swollen up, the breadth of him not only so much greater than she recalled, but so much greater than his clothes could handle. His Michigan sweatshirt was stretching at the seams, and his jeans, though loose at his waist, seemed to be having trouble with the girth of his thighs and then his calves.

He had obviously been angry and had taken his emotions out in the gym. And he was obviously still angry. As he stared down at the female in the bed, his eyes were narrowed, his brows tight. The expression seemed like a permanent part of him, something he had been born with—except she knew that not to be true. He had been happy when she had known him. The life of the party. An older brother who had acted like a younger one.

Now… he was fully adult. There was no sign of the bluster and the fun to him, and as she replayed that voice mail he’d left for her in her head, she had a feeling this was not just because of the dire situation with their mahmen here in this hospital.

She had done this to him. She had done this… to all of them.

Staring through the glass, she felt a sinking feeling in her gut. The true depths of one’s selfishness could not be assessed properly in the heat of the moment. Lost to emotion, to anger and retribution, you could be blinded to the effect you were having on those around you.

It was only from a distance, after a separation and recalibration, that you could see what you had done—and she knew that her absence had changed them, perhaps irrevocably.

And in the saddest of ways, it was proof of the very thing she had questioned, the very thing she had rejected so harshly.

They loved her. And they had mourned their loss.

As the conviction struck Therese, both father and son jerked to attention… and looked over at her.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Therese couldn’t breathe as she put her hand on the lever to open the glass door to the room. She hesitated because she wasn’t sure whether she would be told to go. Whether her brother would throw her out of the ICU as a whole. Whether her father would shun her.

But when neither of them moved, as if her presence was the last thing they had expected, she pushed her way into the—

The scents were the same. Dearest Virgin Scribe… their scents were the same. Beneath the acrid sting of bleach and antiseptic wash, she scented them all, even her mahmen.

As she entered, her father shot to his feet, his chair squeaking on the floor. “Therese…?”

“Dad,” she whispered as her eyes filled with fresh tears.

She didn’t know who moved first. She just knew that between one heartbeat and the next, she was hugging her father and shaking and crying.

“Oh, you came,” he said roughly. “Thank God, you’re here. I think she’s been waiting for you before she…”

Therese pulled back. “What happened? What’s going on with her?”

In the corner of her eye, she noted that her brother had stayed seated—and obviously had no intention of going vertical anytime soon. He was leaning back in the hard chair, his arms crossed over his chest and his jaw rigid, like he was gritting his molars.

“It’s the myopathy,” her father said. “Her heart muscle is just not strong—”

Gareth cut in without looking over. “And stress is so great for her condition—”

“Gareth,” her father interrupted. “Now is not the time.”

“You got that right. She’s too fucking late.”

Gareth got up and strode out before anyone could say anything else. And as the door eased shut behind him, her father closed his eyes.

“Let’s just focus on your being here, yes?” he said in his Old Country accent.

“Yes,” Therese agreed. “There’s time to talk… later.”

Approaching the bed, she had to cover her mouth again to keep her emotions in check. Guilt sickened her stomach, freezing that Raisin Bran she’d eaten in its tracks, and before her legs gave up on their job, she sat down in the plastic chair her brother had been warming. Reaching out, she took her mahmen’s hand, and she was horrified at the bones: Beneath the paper-thin skin, there was no cushion in the anatomy at all. It was as if she were holding on to a skeleton.

“Mah-mah,” she whispered. “I’m here. I’m so sorry… I should have…”

There was no response, of course. Then again, the female was intubated, a machine breathing for her.

“When did this all happen?” Therese asked. Even though she could guess.

Probably right around the first time her brother had left her a message. So about a week after she had left.

Her father sat back down. “Her condition has been a challenge for… a little while.”

“After I left, right.” She glanced up at her father. “You can say it. You can be honest.”

“She was upset. It’s true.”

“I am so sorry.”

“You’re here now. That’s what I really care about.”

“I put her here—”

As Therese started to get emotional again, her father shook his head. “No, you did not. We’ve known all along that at some point she would transition into an acute period. It’s the way her kind of heart disease works. This has been inevitable since she contracted that virus back in the seventies.”