Page 107 of Becoming Us

I chuckled. Atty joined in.

“Also, do you two have another volume besidesloud?” Colin added.

“Oh god,” Atty groaned, thoroughly embarrassed.

That only made me laugh harder. I buried my face in his chest, arms wrapped tight around him.

“I have to go fix that,” he mumbled.

“And change the sheets—they’re soaked.”

Atty sighed, kissed the top of my head, and slowly untangled from me.

I sat up, scanning the wreckage of the room. “Toss them over and I’ll do it. Get these in the wash too. Oh—and your laptop.”

He glanced back, sliding on a pair of shorts. “What?”

“We can look over the loan and the terms and stuff,” I said brightly.

He nodded, tossing me a shirt and some shorts before heading out of the room.

I smiled to myself.

This was perfect.

And now I even got to do something for him. Even out the playing field. Finally not be the one taking all the time.

Everything was working out.

CHAPTER

SIXTEEN

BEFORE

Iwas sick of that fucking smell.

Every corner of this place reeked of it. Cold and sterile, like it should be—but the constant whiffs of stale coffee, antiseptic, and whatever they used to sanitize the floors had started to seep into my bones. I knew that even if I never stepped inside a hospital again, I’d still smell it. Just from memory alone.

My dad’s oncologist’s office was in a different building. That one didn’t smell as bad. But we weren’t called there. Instead, we sat in a small room with white walls and leather armchairs in a washed-out blue that matched absolutely nothing. No decorations. No windows. Just a single box of Kleenex perched on a side table like it knew exactly what was coming.

There was a chart in his lap, but he wasn’t looking at it. He was looking at me. I could feel it, even as I kept my eyes on the tissues.

“Thanks for calling us, Doctor,” my mom said.

Us.

It was just the two of us. Ilana was mid-flight, and I didn’t know where my brothers were. Maybe no one had told them.

When I’d arrived, I hadn’t stopped to greet anyone in the waiting room. I’d walked straight to the ICU.

The nurse walked me through it—tried to, anyway. She explained the ventilator, the swelling, the strange way his body looked. He’d lost so much weight during treatment that now, ironically, he almost looked like himself again. But not really. His fingers were puffy. His face was rounder. There was a pale band where his wedding ring used to sit. She’d said they’d had to take it off because his hands had started to swell too much.

We’d wandered from his room, me still dazed, trying to make sense of the fact that the man in that bed was my father. That this wasn’t just some awful dream I was about to wake up from.

“It’s not a problem,” the doctor said, tapping his pen against the edge of the chart.

“Noah.” My mom’s voice pulled me back. Her face was drawn and tired. No makeup, which was rare for her—strange enough to make her look almost younger.