The ambulance ride is a long, hectic blur. Overlapping voices, sterile smells and sounds I know too well. At the hospital, I sit stiffly under the hum of fluorescent lights and wait, the stench of death and blood and sweat seeping inside my clothes, legs bouncing through the minutes that feel like days until a man in white sidles up next to me. I stand up, and his hand drops down onto my shoulder.

“She’s going to be fine,” he whispers, and there is something in his voice and in his eyes, something unsaid despite that promise. He looks worried—not for her. For me.

I drift inside her room and stand over her. I search her face, looking for something I’m not sure I can find. She’d given up hope a long time ago, but I still hold on to it, for her, for the both of us. I call her, and she peels open her eyes like that one movement is too painful.

“Where am I?”

I reach and hold her hand. It has never felt more fragile, a dead leaf, a wilted petal.

“The hospital, Mom.” I glance down at her fingers, her nails chipped and brittle and stained shades of red. I try to keep my voice even, but it’s so hard, seeing her like this. “You lost a lot of blood this time.”

Her head turns slowly on the pillow, disappointment filling her eyes. “You said you wouldn’t be back until tomorrow.”

My heart stops for an instant.

I know what she means. She’d planned to be dead by the time I got home. The thought makes me tremble, and I have to look away from her.

She glances around as if seeing the room for the first time. When she speaks, her voice is weak, but somehow the anger is still there. “Why did you bring me here? You should have left me.”

I choke on the words. “Because I love you.”

Tears prickle the corners of my eyes, but I move across the room before she can see them fall, my clothes clinging to my body, sopped with her blood.

I stare at my reflection in the window. “How do you feel?”

When she doesn’t respond, I turn back, forcing myself to look past the monitor and the tubes.

She turns to look at me, her eyes raw and wet, the skin dark and loose underneath, a shadow of the woman she used to be. “Do you hate me?”

“No. Don’t talk like that, Mom. Try to relax.” I lean in and press my lips to her cheek. “Try to get some sleep. You’re gonna be okay,” I say, though some part of me knows this won’t be the last time.

I leave the hospital in a rage. I don’t have to ask; I already know what happened.

She found out the truth, just like I did.