POV MANUELA

Time stopped existing the way I had once known it on the day I walked through that door with Jimi and understood that we would not be leaving anytime soon. Inside the isolation room, days had no names, only numbers. There were no real mornings or nights, only cycles of artificial light, the beeping of machines, and the steady sound of my son’s breathing while he slept.

Jimi and I did not live there. We survived there.

The high-dose chemotherapy arrived as a cruel reminder that, ...