Lynn ‘sPOV

The discharge paperwork took forty minutes.

I stood at the nurses' station and signed everything they put in front of me, and the whole time I could see my mother through the glass partition — sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, already dressed, hands folded in her lap the way she did when she was waiting and didn't want anyone to know she was nervous.

She'd lost weight. She held herself like someone who'd been reminded, recently and forcefully, that her ...