And Noah...at work, he probably dealt with moments like that all the time.
People expected doctors to compartmentalize. To power through.
To flip some invisible switch and not feel anything.
But I wasn’t sure Noah did that.
I let my eyes slip closed, blocking out the sun and the motion and the low hum of the bus.
The day my father collapsed, he’d been at work, behind the counter at the post office, probably sorting through a stack of mail, the way he did every morning. Like he’d done for over thirty years.
From what I’d been told, he’d been chatting with one of the regulars, smiling, laughing, completely unaware that something inside him was about to give out.
And when it did—when that first crushing pain hit—he hadn’t been alone. There had been customers, employees, and people who called 911 right away.
But not my mother. Not Ashley.
Not me.
The doctors had been adamant that he hadn’t stood a chance. So, even if there had been someone like Noah there to push aspirin into his hand, he never would have made it.
I hated that I hadn’t been there. Leo reminded me over and over that it wouldn’t have made any difference.
But…it might have.
For my dad, even if it was only to bring him some comfort in his last moments. And for me too. It might have given me the chance to say a proper goodbye.
To hug him one last time.
I’d visited Mom and Dad two weeks before he passed, but I’d cut that visit short, rushing back to Newport, to Leo and the show. Now, I couldn’t even remember what had seemed so important at the time.
I swallowed back the stinging threat of tears, shifting in my seat.
He’d been gone two years now.
Dad had always been the easy one. The fun one. The one who had laughed more than he yelled, who let things go, who had never made me feel like I needed to be someone else.
My mom was the one who’d scolded me about my messy room. The one who sighed every time I forgot something important. The one who, without fail, reminded me that, from the moment I entered this world, I’d been her biggest challenge. Her little Lunatic. Looney Tunes.
And she just couldn’t leave those names in the past. To this day, it was how she introduced me to her friends.
Jokingly. Of course.
“My little Looney Tunes,” she’d say with an exasperated laugh. “When she was in sixth grade, she had a book report due, and she swore up and down that she’d finished it, but she couldn’t find it. We spent all morning going through her room. Remember where it was, Luna?”
She’d told this story more times than I could count.
“It was in her backpack—along with a fossilized sandwhich, her dirty gym clothes, and two other assignments she’d forgotten to turn in. I should have realized back then that she wasn’t college material.”
Cue my dad winking at me from across the table. “I didn’t go to college either,” dad would say with a shrug. “And we’re doing just fine, aren’t we?”
But he was gone now.
I turned away from the window, willing the thought away.
Babs sat beside Noah’s mother, her eyes closed, her hands clasped loosely in her lap. She looked tired, but more than that, she looked…lost, in a way I’d never seen her before. Even when she’d spoken about Morty’s death, back at the Chapel on the Rock, she had mostly just looked at peace.
Had Roger’s attack taken her back? To that moment she’d woken up beside her husband, expecting an ordinary morning, only to realize something was horribly wrong?
