The cafeteria is lively—not the food, the food is soggy—but there aren’t sick people who get breakfast in bed as the one perk of dying. There are other people between these potato-colored, windowless walls, and I couldn’t be more psyched to see them. “The hash browns are worth waiting for,” the woman in bright yellow scrubs says to me as I get in line. I highly doubt that. As I browse the cooler for a drink, I hear my name from somewhere in the corner of the cafeteria.

“Cham?” My body freezes. I’m not “Cham” here. “Cham?”

I turn from the cartons of lemonade and orange juice and spot Brendan, of all people, eating by himself in the corner of the cafeteria.

“What are you doing here?” he hollers. Approximately everyone in the cafeteria turns in their blue plastic chairs. “Are you okay?”

I glare at him and select an orange juice. I’m fine, I mouth, then hurry toward the register. When it’s my turn, I hand the woman my mom’s debit card.

“Sorry, we only take hospital bucks here.” She points to the sign by the computer. It says SORRY WE ONLY TAKE HOSPITAL BUCKS HERE.

“Oh, um, I don’t have hospital bucks.” I consider putting my food back, but I’m starving. “Are you sure you can’t take a card?”

She pats down her thinning, orangish-dyed hair and eyes what I imagine is a growing line behind me. “I’ve worked here ten years. I’m sure.”

I look down at my scrambled eggs, wondering how I’m supposed to divorce them so soon, before we even got married.

“Hi, Jackie,” Brendan says, appearing beside me. “I can get her.” He’s wearing a maroon vest and a sticker that says I’M SO HAPPY TO VOLUN-CHEER! He holds his hospital ID out, and she takes it with a smile. “You got it, Brendan.”

Once she swipes his card, we walk toward the dispensers for napkins and plastic ware. I wonder if I should say Thank you or Thank you so much. “Thanks,” I finally say.

“Don’t worry about it.”

We hover by the recycling bins as I wolf down my breakfast. The eggs taste like packing peanuts.

“So is it your dad?” he asks.

I start to shake my head, but then my lip trembles. “Yeah.”

“What happened?”

I look out at the gloomy cafeteria and lean against the three bins behind me: compost, recycling, trash. I feel comforted knowing there’s a proper receptacle for everything. “I found him in the bathroom after he had some sort of episode thing and yeah…” Remembering it is like remembering a TV show, a dark one with very good acting, an Emmy-quality nightmare.

“Wow, that must have been awful,” he says.

“And now he’s all confused and thinks the doctors are holding him here against his will, and when I said I couldn’t get him out, he told me I was a disappointment.” My cheeks are hot and my armpits are sweating. “It’s just that this sort of thing happened last year and I completely froze and didn’t call the ambulance and he could’ve died and now this time even though I did—”