Uncle Gavin opens his eyes. They are black as tar and they are aimed directly at me.

“We have to move,” an EMT says.

“Wait,” I say, stepping forward, eyes still on Uncle Gavin. “I’m his niece. What—”

“Ma’am, you’ll need to step back—”

“I’m not going anywhere. What happened?”

Uncle Gavin moves his hand—slowly, too slowly—up to the oxygen mask and pulls it down from his nose and mouth.

“Sir! Please don’t—”

Uncle Gavin is mouthing words, his dark eyes fixed on mine. I step forward. “What?” I say, bending low. “I can’t hear—”

“Peaches,” my uncle says.

“Ma’am.” An EMT faces me from the other side of the stretcher. “We have to go right now.” He puts the oxygen mask back onto my uncle’s face, and then they are rolling him away to the glass door exit, beyond which is an ambulance with red lights flashing. Uncle Gavin’s eyes remain fixed on mine until the EMTs turn the stretcher so he no longer faces me. I bend down and pick up the flat cap, holding it in both hands as I watch them load Uncle Gavin into the ambulance and drive off in a squawk of sirens.

GOD INVENTED CIGARETTES for moments like this, pacing around a hospital waiting room. There are No Smoking signs posted every twenty feet, and I don’t smoke, but I want to light up anyway as a big fat finger to the universe.

“Suzie,” Caesar says from his chair where he’s been sitting.

“Don’t tell me it’s going to be okay.” I march past him and then turn to retrace the same path I’ve been walking for twenty minutes.

“I’m not,” Caesar says.

“Heart attacks aren’t okay.”

“No.”

An hour earlier when we arrived at Grady Memorial, an exhausted-looking doctor in scrubs told us that my uncle had experienced a myocardial infarction and they needed to run more tests.

“Why the hell was he at the airport?” I’m kneading Uncle Gavin’s flat cap in my hands, worrying at it like a crazed milliner. “Did you know he would be there?”

“No,” Caesar says, answering that question for the third time. Maybe fourth.

“And what the fuck did he mean by peaches?” I turn about sharply and my leg hits a side table, nearly spilling its glossy magazines to the floor. I ignore it and march on. “Does he have some kind of special peaches at the bar? A peach grove? I don’t—”

“Suzie.”

“What?”

“Your brother is here,” Caesar says. “Just texted me.”

The nearest elevator door rumbles open, and I turn to see Ethan and Frankie step out into the hallway.