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“Stage four pancreatic cancer. It’s my understanding it came on fast.” He stopped in front of an open door. Mateo looked in and saw his mother was in a private room. He knew that her benefits from DuPont, where she was a scientist, were top-notch.

Rodney knocked on the doorjamb. “Gracie, are you up for a visitor?”

Mateo winced. He knew his mother hated the Americanized version of her name.

There was no answer.

“Why don’t I just go in? The nurse told me the drill. If she’s not awake, I’ll just sit beside her. How is she doing?”

It pissed him the fuck off that he had to ask a stranger about his mother’s condition.

“Pancreatic cancer is one of the worst. It comes on fast, and the pain is unimaginable.”

He should have been the one who knew that. He should have been here as soon as she got the diagnosis. His Lieutenant would have given him the time off, he knew it.

Mateo nodded once and marched past Rodney. He was done talking. He wanted to see his mother, and he wanted to see her now!

There weren’t any drapes on the windows, just thin metal slats that sent stripes of light streaming across his mother’s frail body like she was behind prison bars. Her head was turned away from the sun, and he went to the shades and shut them closed with an emphatic snap. She had enough pain going on; she didn’t need the sun hurting her eyes.

When he turned back to look at her, he saw that her face had relaxed. That was good. It was the only thing that was good. The last time he’d seen his mom was at Thanksgiving ten months ago. She must have lost half of her body weight since then.

A large recliner was in the corner of the room, so he picked it up and brought it close to her so that he could hold her hand.

The hands that had once guided him, and sheltered him, and sometimes whooped him, were now feather-light. These were not her hands. He looked at her face and his heart stuttered. This was not his mother.

He sucked in a deep breath, making sure he could hold it together.

“Ma, I got here as quick as I could. Come on and open your pretty brown eyes for me, huh?”

He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand and she slowly turned her head in his direction.

“Luis?” she whispered.

“No, Ma. It’s me, Mateo,” he corrected her gently. She was always looking for his brother Luis. Her pride and joy.

He felt her hand tremble as she tried to squeeze his, then her face spasmed in pain and she whimpered. The IV drip that had to be pumping her full of narcotics wasn’t doing its job. He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed it.

“Just a moment, Ma. I’ll get help.”

He shot out of the chair and ran down to the nurses station. It was the same friendly nurse as before. She was talking to another visitor. Mateo didn’t care, and he interrupted.

“My mother is waking up and she’s whimpering in pain. She needs something.”

She nodded. “I’ll send somebody as soon as they’re available.”

“She needs something now.”

“Mr. Aranda, let me just finish up here and I’ll go there personally, all right?”

He realized it was as good as he was going to get, so he nodded, then hustled back to his mother’s room. Now she wasn’t just whimpering, she was moaning.

“Ma, it’s going to be all right. Somebody is going to come in and help you, I promise,” he said in Spanish.

“English. We’re in America, we speak English,” she corrected him. Just like she always had.

“A nurse is going to be here soon,” he promised her in English.

Her eyes squeezed tightly, then opened. “Luis?”