Her favorite hospice nurse, Shannon, had just started her shift when she woke Hanna, who was slumped sideways in the chair beside her mother.
Lisa had been silent for two days.
“What?”
Shannon’s lips twisted, a sunburst of wrinkled wisdom emerging around them.
“It’s basically life support at this point, love. If you took her off, it would only take a few hours, maybe less.”
Hanna wished she could go back to sleep.
“I just thought you should know that’s what’s happening. Knowledge is power.”
Shannon had repeated that to her a few times. Knowledge was power. Funny how it seemed to drain her of any.
“What would you do?” She sat up in the chair, stretching her neck, unsure if she’d ever sit properly again between the weeks spent on hospital floors, cancer center chairs, and air mattresses. “If it were your mom?”
Shannon laid a hand on Hanna’s shoulder, her eyes saying everything she needed to, but she affirmed it for her anyway.
“If the only thing keeping her here is a machine…”
Hanna nodded, the weight pressing down on her chest building quickly. It was that thing again, that goddamned anger she couldn’t escape. Anger that this happened. Anger that the surgery hadn’t worked. Anger that the chemo only made her worse.
Anger that she’d been staring at her lifeless face for two days, desperate for it to be over but unable to say it out loud.
Anger that she had to be the one to call it.
Her lungs squeezed against the responsibility. Who could possibly make that kind of choice? She reached for her phone—it was muscle memory.
But who the fuck would she call?
Hanna woke with a start, her fingers threaded through sheets that didn’t smell like her, sweat pooling at the back of her neck. Her breathing was stilted—it always was after one of her hospice nightmares.
“Hanna?”
She couldn’t focus her eyes, her lungs pushing against her ribs with shallow gasps.
“Hanna, it’s okay.”
The evening sun streamed into his bedroom, painting the blacks and grays in a soft amber. She must have fallen asleep waiting for him to get home. Milo’s hand pushed against her chest with a soft insistence, finding the right pressure to force a breath to catch.
“You’re okay,” he whispered.
She closed her eyes, letting the pressure pull her back into her body. When the fire in her muscles finally burned out, she covered his hand with hers, staring at the face of the clock inked on his arm.
“You were screaming.”
“I had a nightmare,” she managed, still unsure when she’d even laid down. Milo brushed her hair away from her face, his body flush against hers as the room fell back into focus.
“I won’t make you tell?—”
“I was in the hospice home again, having to make the call to kill the oxygen. It, uh, it’s just a recurring dream I have.” His lips fell into a sorrowful tilt as he moved to lift his hand, but she pinned it. She wasn’t ready to give up the anchor yet. “Sorry I was screaming.”
“Don’t apologize,” he insisted. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” she repeated.
She risked a glance at his eyes, filled with all sorts of thoughts he didn’t share. His lips parted, but before he could ask her if she really was okay again, she silenced him with a kiss, shifting his hand lower. She’d caught him off guard with her tears the night before—once the dam broke, she couldn’t get it back. But she trusted herself a little more, believed that she could bend and not break, even if only for a little while.
