My mom shook her head miserably. “But I made you think you weren’t beautiful. I watched all the YouTube videos, you know. I saw girls just like you talking about how much they hated their mothers because of how bad they made them feel. Just like I did with you. The truth is, I knew it was too much when I was doing it. Your dad said I needed to stop, but I couldn’t figure out how. Why couldn’t I make myself stop? I was so afraid for you. All I could do was criticize you. But you’re beautiful, Dawn. I don’t care how fat you are. You’re my fat, beautiful daughter.

Okay, now I was tearing up too. I gave up on talking and drew her into my arms. Not just because I never realized how much I needed to hear her say that, but also because I was crying now. And that wouldn’t exactly sell my “everything’s going to be okay, you’re definitely not going to die” argument.

We sniffled together for a few moments, and when we drew apart, we found Victor once again standing on the other side of my mother’s hospital bed.

“Do not cry. Everything will be OK,” he told her. The look on his face was both tender and stern. “I promise you.”

His words made my mother smile. Authentically, not falsely as she had for Byron.

“OK, Dawn’s Husband,” she said to Victor. “If you say everything is going to be OK, then I believe you. I’ll wake up from the surgery, and that handsome gay doctor will say, no more cancer for you! Then after that, I will set him up with Byron, and there will be nothing either of them can do about it.”

My mother actually rubbed her hands together with gleeful anticipation.

We all laughed, but I don’t think it was a joke. Victor had that way about him. If he said something was true, people believed him. Even my scared mom.

Attendants came to wheel her into surgery a few minutes later. And suddenly, the space between Victor and me was empty.

For the first time in fifteen years, I closed the distance between us, and I took him by the hand. I didn’t mean to do it. I think I was just upset. Not to mention weirdly grateful for all he’d done for us today.

He stilled at my touch, his entire body stiffening beside me.

“We can go back to hating each other tomorrow,” I whispered. “But right now, I need your strength.”

He stood there frozen, and I wondered if he’d pull away.

But no, in the end, he squeezed my hand. Holding it tight until my mom had disappeared from sight.

Only then did he let me go.