“You were out screwing some bitch and your kid was dying. Don’t tell me you love her!” Sandra was trying to whisper, but her voice carried beyond me; a woman walking the hall with a small child attached to an IV looked at them nervously and tried to shepherd her toddler out of earshot. “You didn’t even get to the hospital until almost midnight.”

“I came here as soon as I heard. Have I left the hospital for one second since? You know damned well I can’t take calls on the truck phone, and I get home to find you gone, the kid gone, no message from you. I figured you and April were out, you’re always taking her off someplace, buying her crap we don’t have money for.

“As far as you’re concerned, I don’t exist. I’m just the paycheck to cover the bills you can’t pay on your own. You didn’t even have the sense or decency to call me, the kid’s own father. I had to get the news off the answering machine, and it wasn’t you who called but that goddamn Warshawski bitch. That’s how I find out my own kid is sick, not from my own wife. Mrs. High-and-Mighty, Virgin Mary had nothing on you for purity, and you wonder why I look for human flesh and blood someplace else.”

“At least you can be sure April is your daughter, which is more than Jesse Navarro or Lech Bukowski can say about their own kids, all the time you spent with their wives, and now, now they’re saying April has this thing with her heart, this thing, she can’t play basketball anymore.” Sandra’s thin aging face was twisted in pain.

“Basketball? She’s sick as a horse, and you’re upset she can’t play a stupid goddamn ball game? What’s with you?” Bron smashed the wall with the palm of his hand.

A nurse making rounds paused next to me, gauging the level of anger in the alcove, then shook her head and moved on.

“I don’t care about the stupid goddamn ball game!” Sandra’s voice rose. “It’s April’s ticket to college, you—you loser. You know damned well she can’t go on your paycheck. I’m not having her do like me, spend her life married to some creep who can’t keep his pants zipped, working her life away at By-Smart because she can’t do any better. Look at me, I look as old as your mother, and talk about the High-and-Mighty Mother of God, that’s how she looks on you, and me, I’m supposed to get down on my knees and slobber thanks because I married you, and you can’t even support your own kid.”

“What do you mean, I can’t support her? Fuck you, bitch! Did she ever go to school hungry or—”