She looked like a shadow of the person I once knew. Her frame was fragile beneath the loose cardigan, her hair shorn close, and her eyes hollowed out by a secret I had not been there to share.
For a moment, I couldn’t move.
I had come to the hospital to visit a coworker after surgery.
I had not come prepared to find the woman I had loved sitting alone outside the oncology ward, tethered to an IV pole.
Then she looked up.
And my name broke softly from her lips.
“Nathan?”
