“Don’t wake her,” Leah said and sat. I went to the hallway for a smaller plastic chair, carried it back to the room in front of me like a battering ram. My mom’s purse thunked against my hip; inside, pills rattled, my phone vibrated. I put the chair down across the bed from Leah, where I could see her, and checked my notifications: more responses to the pain-scale faces, the feminist reading list, the bruised and swollen lip injection selfie I’d reposted, trying to imply I was somewhere other than where I truly was, trying to imply a procedure that filled, rather than diminished. I shut the phone, put it on the seat, sat on its face.

Leah had balled up, arms wrapped around skulled knees. “Naurene looks old,” she whispered and then, “I didn’t mean that the way it sounds.”

“It’s okay,” I said and we went quiet. My mother’s body inflated, deflated, in the space between us. Her eyelids flitted open, shut.

“Mom,” I said, loud enough to rouse her. “Look who’s here.”

“Naurene,” Leah said.

My mom opened and closed her mouth.

“She’s actually doing better,” I said and wondered when I should tell Leah about the tumors. If I should tell her. As far as Leah was concerned, the surgery was exploratory, but so far inconclusive. I wasn’t even sure my mother knew what the surgeon had found. And though I had intended to tell Leah in person, though I suspected it was my job to tell my mom as well, I was afraid to see either of them grieve. As if the pain of the women I loved might peel the lid off my own.

“Girls,” my mom whispered and then, “Walk the dogs for me, will you?”

I turned to Leah. Hallucinations, I whispered knowingly. The pain meds.

“No dogs, Mom.” I said, “Just us.”

“Naurene, it is so good to see you,” Leah said. Her face was unsticking, contorting into expressions I could no longer physically accomplish: a squinched frown, a lifted brow when she removed her glasses and wiped the tears away. I thought about how, as a child, she’d rarely cried. I had been the emotional one. And now? My mother reached her wired-up hand for Leah’s hand, which uncoiled from inside the sleeve of her sweatshirt. I had a sudden urge to run, hide in a break room or linen cart. I picked up my phone.