“My favorite thing about you is that you always help everyone you can.”

She was so small in the middle of the bed, as if she’d shrunk while I’d been in LA. I lay down next to her and closed my eyes.

“My favorite thing about you is that you didn’t let obstacles stop you. You demanded to be seen, even if the art world considered you just a woman. You didn’t stop to count broken bones while busting through the barricades. And you showed your students how to fight too.”

When I’d been young and run out of favorites, Violet would go on and on about her favorite things about me. I was in college by the time I figured out that the game had been her way of building my self-esteem, an attempt to counteract my father’s absentminded inattention and my mother’s frequent criticism.

“My favorite thing about you is that you never give up, so I know you’re going to wake up and come back to me. Forget the mango pudding downstairs. Open your eyes, and I’ll pull a heist at the Cheesecake Factory.”

We lay next to each other, like when I’d been a scared child and fled to her bed in the middle of the night. She used to have an old honey locust tree in front of her house, and when the wind blew, its branches scratched against the window my daybed was under. At the first crack of a storm, the first hard gust of wind, I’d be out from under my blankets and under Violet’s so fast, I swear my feet didn’t touch the floor. They say love gives you wings, but so does fear.

I counted Violet’s slow heartbeats. True fear lived in the pauses. Fear that I wouldn’t hear another thump.

As I listened, I dozed a little, until beeping monitors startled me awake. I scampered out of the bed, disoriented.

A nurse rushed in, one of the young new ones, Juliet. “Please step back.”

Then more people crowded in, until I could no longer see Violet’s face. My heart twisted and tripped. I stumbled to the window and stared out into the rainy afternoon.

I prayed.

I cried.

I prayed again.

She had to make it. She had to live. I couldn’t imagine a world without Violet.

I prayed.

I cried.

I prayed again.

Juliet appeared at my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Emsley. So sorry.”

Her words were like hard fingers at my back, shoving me onto subway tracks. I fell, then crashed, hard, and the black beast of grief ran me over.

Where were my legs? Where was the air from my lungs? Where were my words?

“No.” I had to fight for the single syllable, and the rest didn’t come any easier. “Please, you have to save her.”