the air between them like a blade. “This is too much.” Her
tone was so much softer. “It’s all too much. I’m sorry. We can
talk about this later.”
Coralyn was sorry too. She left silently, with a nod, hating
herself. Hating what she’d become. She hated it all the way to
the hospital in Giana’s borrowed car. The thing was so new it
still smelled like the factory. It was spotless. Flawless. It had
to cost more than her mother’s necklace was worth. The
necklace that they’d sold which made her father’s care
possible. Giana made that possible, in a way.
Coralyn was thankful for the lunch bag and the mug to
grasp as she walked into the hospital. At least it was
something to hold her down. Something with some substance
and some weight to it. She needed that more than anything.
She slipped into her dad’s room and was immediately
disheartened to see that he looked the same way he did before
she’d left to get changed and head to Giana’s house, thinking
she could still call the whole thing off. She had her chance.
She’d blown it quite spectacularly to cover her tracks.
One of the same nurses who had been there on and off since
her dad had come to the palliative care ward, Jennifer, came in
a few minutes later. She hovered near the end of the bed, but
she wasn’t checking a chart or doing vitals or anything else.
Coralyn eventually looked away from her dad’s face and up
past the set of blue scrubs to a kind smile.
Jennifer was pretty, like a lot of the nurses. Young. She
looked fresh out of school too. She had a neat French braid in
her highlighted blonde hair. She wasn’t tall or short, and her
looks weren’t more than what other people would probably
call run of the mill, but to Coralyn, she was beautiful because