After Heart Surgery, I Woke Up to Learn My Three Children Had Gone Home Because Hospital Parking Was Too Expensive. I Lay There in Tears Until a Well-Dressed Stranger Entered,

only two weeks away. Watching rain from my hospital bed, I remembered seven-year-old Sarah falling in her pink tutu during a recital and rising again; four-year-old Michael mourning a crushed worm and insisting we bury it beneath a tiny stick cross; and ten-year-old David proudly balancing my checkbook faster than I could.

Now that same David intended to tell a court I couldn’t add.

“Adrienne,” Malcolm said quietly. “You don’t have to decide anything right now. You just had heart surgery.”

“Yes, I do,” I said.

I faced him, surprised