I’d asked to stay with June, but she was in worse shape than I was and they were sort of rushing her around, a towel draped over her shoulders – to warm her up, sure, but I think also to conceal the failure of human anatomy that her lower left arm had become. We said a hurried goodbye and a nurse, probably noticing the way my face fell, said, ‘Don’t worry. You’ll see her soon.’ She didn’t know anything that had happened. She had no idea that I’d already mentally lost June and that I worried if she slipped out of the hospital doors without me I might never see her again, that if we weren’t pressed shoulder to shoulder something could worm its way between us. But something about the easiness of her words calmed me down.

She led Mom and me to a cramped examination room that smelled like alcohol and flu.

And once the door shut, Mom held my face in her hands and just looked at me. Her eyes flicked back and forth, trying to find something in my face, something in me, and I wasn’t sure what, so I just looked at her as gently and as honestly as I could.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. For making her worry. For being unfair. For the fact that any of this had happened to us at all.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry this has been so difficult. I would – God, Sydney, if I could take this all from you I’d do it in a second. Those –’ she rubbed my cheeks – ‘bags under your eyes …’

‘A parting gift.’ We both laughed – less laughs and more quick exhales but the moment was significant in that it existed at all, despite everything, despite the tears pooling on her face that suggested the last thing she wanted to do now was laugh.

Mom picked a dry clump of mud out of my hair. ‘I can’t even tell you how afraid I was when I got the call. I can’t even begin.’

‘I’m OK, Mom.’

‘I know. But my mind has already gone to that place, and that takes a toll on you. When it’s about your daughter –’

‘I know.’ I lowered myself on to the examination table and tried to lean back, the paper crinkling underneath me. My back screamed. I managed to lay my head down, and looked at the ceiling. There was a sort of mural taped to it of a night sky, stars and planets and galaxies all swirling against navy blue.

This was the hospital Dad had died in.

Did his ceiling have stars? I couldn’t remember, I couldn’t remember.

‘So much,’ she said, then lowered her voice. ‘I’m so sorry this has been so hard.’