I will not forgive myself for not being there. I know that isn’t rational. It doesn’t matter.
Every day without Emma felt like a year, and somehow the weeks disappeared anyway. Noah went to school because we insisted, but every afternoon my mother drove him straight to the hospital. He ate dinner beside Emma’s bed, did homework in the chair by the window, and read books aloud to her. Sometimes he fell asleep with his head resting beside her arm. He asked to sleep there almost every night, and he’d done it more times than he should have.
My mother and I had started talking about it quietly. He needed to be home. He needed to be a kid for an hour a day. He needed to sleep in his own bed.
So that Saturday, I sat down beside him. He was bent over a superhero comic, his sneakers barely reaching the floor. Noah was a Marvel kid. He knew every character, every storyline, every impossible resurrection and alternate universe, so I tried to speak his language.
“Buddy, I know you’re Mom’s protector. But even superheroes have to go home and rest, or they can’t protect anybody. Let’s go home tonight.”
He looked up. “What day is it today?”
“Saturday.”
His face changed. Not dramatically. He just closed the comic.
“I can’t do Saturdays. Mom won’t have anyone to talk to.”
For a second, I thought he was playing. “Don’t joke about that, Noah.”
