So I answered.

An unknown woman asked, “Are you, Harrison?”

“Yes.”

She drew a trembling breath.

“Please tell me you haven’t arrived yet.”

I stood so quickly that the envelope slipped from my hand.

I picked it up while my heart raced.

“What happened?”

There was a pause.

Then she said, “I’m Margaret’s daughter. My name is Ellen. My mother had a heart attack this morning.”

“Is she…”

I could not finish the question.

“She’s alive,” Ellen said quickly. “She’s in the hospital. They stabilized her, but they’re worried. She kept asking whether you’d already arrived. I found your number in her address book.”

I dropped into the nearest seat.

“What hospital?”

She told me.

In one of those moments that seems too perfectly arranged to be coincidence, the hospital was not far from the bus route.

After confirming that with the driver, I called Ellen again.

“I’ll be there in an hour,” I said, my voice shaking. “I’m one stop away.”

“Then come,” she said, and her voice cracked. “Please come now.”

The next section of road passed in a blur.

I remember only that I prayed with real desperation for the first time in years.

At the next stop, I left the bus and found a taxi.

When I reached the hospital, my hands shook so badly that I had to sign the visitor form slowly enough for my name to resemble my own.

Ellen met me in the lobby.

The instant I saw her, I knew she belonged to Margaret.

She had her mother’s eyes exactly.

The same wide, thoughtful shape.

The same way of looking directly at someone while somehow pushing through her own fear to do what needed to be done.

“Yes, this is me.”

She nodded.

Then, to my surprise, she stepped forward and hugged me.

“She’ll be glad you’re here,” she whispered.

Margaret was awake when I entered the room.

She looked small and pale.

For one terrible second, I saw only the illness.

The sharp lines of her face.

The blanket pulled too high.

The wires.

The unnatural stillness.

Then she turned her head, recognized me, and managed a smile.

It was her.

Older, yes.

Fragile in a way that frightened me immediately.

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