DON’T STOP (Lila and Darrell) novel Chapter 117

Back in his Heart 117

Daisy

“Your brother is good,” he said.

“Don’t tell him that,” I said. “He’ll be unbearable.”

Norman smiled.

I reached over and took his hand.

He turned it over and laced his fingers through mine, and we sat like that while Michael ran a board meeting on the other side of the glass wall like he had been doing it his whole life.

***

That Tuesday morning was bright and unhurried.

I had canceled everything the night before – my meetings, my calls, my entire day and hadn’t thought twice about it. We had nowhere to be and nothing to prove, and the whole morning stretched out ahead of us like something rare.

The hospital corridors were familiar to me now in the way that places become familiar when you spend enough time in them the particular smell of the reception area, the way the light fell through the east wing windows in the morning, and which nurse worked which floor on which day. I knew all of it. I had learned all of it without meaning to.

I pushed his wheelchair through the main doors and out into the morning sunshine.

He tilted his face up toward it immediately, eyes closing, like a plant that had been kept from the light too long. I watched him do it and felt something quiet and full move through my chest.

We found a bench near the hospital garden, away from the busier paths, where the sunshine came through uninterrupted and the sound of the city was distant enough to feel peaceful. I set the brake on the wheelchair and sat beside him on the bench and unpacked the small container I had brought from home – leftovers from yesterday’s dinner, things I knew he could manage, portioned carefully.

He ate slowly. I didn’t rush him.

We watched people pass. An older man walking a very small dog. Two nurses eating lunch on a bench across the path. A child running ahead of her mother with complete confidence in her own direction.

“How are you feeling today?” I asked.

He considered it genuinely, the way he had started doing

not reaching immediately for fine, not arranging his face into

the performance of okay. He thought about it and then answered honestly.

“Not bad,” he said. “Actually, not bad.” A small pause. “The doctor said the last results were better than he expected. He thinks I might have more time than they originally said.”

I looked at him.

He was looking at the garden, cap on, hands loose in his lap, the morning light catching the side of his face. He looked thin. He looked tired. He looked like someone who had been through something long and hard and was still in the middle of it.

He looked like mine.

“That’s good,” I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt. “That’s really good, Norman.”

He turned and smiled at me.

I smiled back.

He yawned then – wide and unself-conscious, the kind of yawn that belongs to someone whose body is making its needs very clear.

“Tired?” I asked.

“Mm.” He nodded slowly, eyes already heavier. “I really need a nap.”

I looked at him for a moment.

Then I patted my lap.

Just once. A quiet invitation, nothing more.

He looked down at my lap and then up at my face Successfully unlocked! did when there was nobody to perform for and noung to mamitain,

He shifted carefully and lowered his head onto my lap.

ession went soft and unhurried the way it only

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Back in his Hean 11

I felt the Weight of it eattle and ! rested my hand gently on his cap, and then I just sat there in the sunshine while he slept

he garden move-quietly stund us. A breeze came through once and lifted the edges of my hair.

Somewhere nearby a bird was going about its business with great dedication. The sun moved slowly across the sky the way it does when you are netwatching a clock

Thirty minutes passed.

The sun had grown warmer, pressing down with more insistence now, the pleasant morning brightness turning into something that asked more of you.

I looked down at him.

“Norman,” I said softly. “We should start heading back. It’s getting hot.”

Nothing.

I waited.

“Norman.”

The garden continued around us. The bird. The breeze. The distant sounds of the city going about its day without us.

I tapped his shoulder gently.

Nothing.

My hand stilled on his cap.

I sat quietly for a moment that lasted a very long time. My heart was beating in a way I could fee! through my whole body, slow and enormous, like it was working very hard to keep me upright.

I reached down and found his hand where it rested against the bench.

It was cold.

Not the cool of someone sleeping in shade. Cold in a way that the warm bright morning had nothing to do with and could not explain.

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