Chapter 8
The linoleum floor of the third-floor corridor was scrubbed clean, but it couldn't mask the smell of boiled cabbage and antiseptic that hung in the air like a heavy blanket. The fluorescent lights overhead flickered with a faint, high-pitched buzz that made Julian’s teeth ache. He walked behind the boy, his leather-soled shoes clicking sharply against the floor, each step sounding like a gavel falling in an empty courtroom.
Room 304 was at the very end of the hall, past the nurses' station where a young woman in blue scrubs was half-asleep over a ledger. She didn't look up as they passed; visitors were common enough at all hours in a place like this, where people came to trade their last hours for a little more time under the lights.
Leo pushed the door open with his hip. It swung inward with a soft squeak of ungreased hinges.
The room was small, dominated by a narrow metal bed pushed against the wall beneath a high, barred window. A single plastic chair sat in the corner, draped with a faded cardigan that Julian recognized instantly—the same blue wool he had watched Clara spin on the porch during their last summer together before the strike at the mill.
Clara was lying against the pillows, her eyes closed, her breathing shallow and uneven, accompanied by the steady, mechanical click-hiss of the oxygen pump beside the mattress. Her face was hollowed out by illness, the skin drawn tight across her cheekbones, but the dark hair falling across the pillow was still threaded with the same stubborn curl he remembered.
May you like
Julian stopped in the doorway. His boots seemed glued to the linoleum. He had spent forty years building a fortress of marble and silence to keep the world out, but looking at the woman in the narrow white bed, he realized he had only succeeded in locking himself inside a cell.
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