"Me! I am!"
"Doctor, how is my grandmother?"
He pulled down his mask and let out a heavy breath.
"She's alive."
"But the situation is far from stable. She could deteriorate at any time."
"We'll move her to a room for observation."
They wheeled my grandmother into a private ward.
She lay there with an oxygen mask over her face. The kind, gentle features I'd known my whole life were utterly still, drained of all life.
I kept vigil at her bedside, gripping her wrinkled hand, tears falling silently onto the sheets.
Grandma, you have to pull through. You're all I have left.
I prayed in silence.
If she would just wake up, I'd give up everything else. Phil, the money he'd swindled, the love I'd wasted on him. None of it mattered.
By eight that evening, her condition had stabilized slightly.
I got up and headed to the hospital cafeteria to buy some soft food, something she could eat when she woke. But when I hurried back with the thermos container, I saw Clarissa slipping into the room while I was gone.
She stood at Grandma's bedside, leaning down, her lips pressed close to Grandma's ear, whispering something I couldn't hear.