Or just 48 seconds.
It depends on whether I wake up crying or I’m up all night and still crying.
I feel like I’m losing my mind, and Dane seems to think so too, because when I finally work up the courage to visit him, he looks at me like I’m the one who recently got shot, not him.
“What happened to you?”
“Um, you look good too, thanks.”
His hospital room is standard-issue depressing: beige walls, fluorescent lighting, a window with a view of the parking structure. Get-well cards line the windowsill, and there’s a half-eaten cup of Jell-O on his tray table that makes my artist brain want to sketch it as a still life titled “Institutional Despair.”
Dane shakes his head, and it’s only when he turns that I belatedly realize he’s not alone.
“Mira, this is Pastor Chandler, my grief counselor.”
Oh!
The guy whose organization’s business card Dane gave me!
The pastor rises from the visitor’s chair—a kind-faced man in his sixties with silver hair and the sort of gentle eyes that make you want to confess things you didn’t even know you were hiding.
“Pastor, this is Mira.”
Is it just me, or did Dane give the good pastor a meaningful look?
“Ah, so you are Mira.”
So it wasn’t just me then.
“Whatever he’s told you, Pastor, it’s absolutely—”
“I’m very sorry about your loss, my dear. Dane has been telling me how kindhearted you are.”
“—just Dane being nice,” I manage to finish, and I ignore the way Dane smirks. I usually love him like a brother, but there are times like this when I’m incredibly tempted to give him a little kick. Maybe I would have, too, if he wasn’t the one wearing a hospital gown between the two of us.
“How are you faring?”
His choice of words makes me smile despite myself. He makes me feel like I’m talking to C.S. Lewis, but in Christian mode, not Narnian.
“I’m...surviving.” I feel like I have to be honest, since it’s an honest-to-goodness pastor I’m talking to, and one who legit has Jesus in his heart.
Pastor Chandler nods in understanding. “Because of your beau.”
Like...ribbons?
“He’s also confined here, if I’m not mistaken?”
Oh, now I get it. And the moment I realize he’s talking about Zacharie—
No no no.
Don’t do it.
Don’t.
But it’s too late.
My face has already started to crumple. “I just miss him.”
