My appendix ruptured at 2 a.m., and I called my parents seventeen times before the world began to blur. My mother finally texted back: “Your sister’s baby shower is tomorrow. We can’t leave now.”

The kind where I needed help showering. The kind where walking to the mailbox felt like crossing a desert. The kind where I cried because I dropped a spoon and could not bend down to pick it up.

Gerald never made me feel small.

When I apologized for needing help, he said, “That’s what help is for.”

When I cried from frustration, he said, “Your body fought a war. Let it limp home.”

When I worried I was becoming a burden, he looked genuinely offended.

“Burden is a word selfish people use when love asks them to carry something.”

Ruth visited on Sundays.

She was Gerald’s older sister, a sharp-eyed woman with silver hair, red lipstick, and the energy of a retired school principal who still frightened grown men at grocery stores.

The first time she met me, she looked me over and said, “You’ve got his eyes.”

Gerald choked on his coffee.

I smiled.

Ruth brought casseroles, gossip, and a level of practical affection I did not know what to do with.

“Eat,” she ordered. “You’re too thin.”

I obeyed.

It was nice, being bossed around by someone whose concern did not have hooks in it.

Weeks passed.