By the time I step out of the hospital elevator onto my uncle’s floor—Jesus, my uncle’s been here less than twenty-four hours and I already think of this as his floor—I’m late, but my heart is now limping along at its usual pace. Whatever anger I felt at the man on the train, I’ve left it behind to linger in the street like cigarette smoke. In its place is a brittle anxiety, both for my uncle and for what I almost did on the train. If I’d been carrying a pistol, I would’ve put it to that man’s head. I wanted to scare him, even hurt him. And for what? For being an asshole? Take a number and get in line, brother, the world is full of them. An old therapist of mine, Dr. Ashan, would call what I did transference, redirecting my emotions about one person or situation to another, unrelated person or situation. I took all my grief and frustration and rage, and I unloaded it all on that asshole dad on the train.

But another part of me—the part that would shrug in the face of the devil himself, would say to him what the fuck are you looking at—has a different response: Good. That guy needed to be taken down a notch. And to be honest, Dr. Ashan was a pretty shitty therapist. For all the times I saw him in therapy, I would’ve gotten better results if I’d just watched a full day of Sesame Street episodes.

The logical side of me knows I’m avoiding hard truths, that my denials are bullshit. But this is my reality: my id, ego, and superego crammed into a car that’s hurtling down the highway, all three of them fighting over the wheel.

Outside my uncle’s room I pause and take a breath, then open the door. My brother and a nurse and Dr. Lewis are standing around my uncle’s bed. They all look up at me.

“Suzie,” Ethan says.

“Sorry I’m late,” I say. “I rode MARTA and—” I stop talking when I see my uncle behind them. He’s lying in the hospital bed as before, but now he has a breathing tube in his mouth. He looks even older and weaker than he did yesterday. And his eyes are open and gazing at me.

“He stopped breathing this morning,” Ethan says. “They had to intubate him. They have to do the surgery now, Susannah.”

“Your brother’s right,” Dr. Lewis says. “We would have intubated him anyway for the surgery, after administering general anesthesia, but we had to do it to keep his airway open. And now because he’s already intubated, and we’ve already decided on a valve—” He looks at Ethan.

“Uncle Gavin wants the mechanical valve,” Ethan says to me. “It’s the best choice for him.”