Chapter 6: The Drive to the Airport
We flew home two days later.
Ethan slept for most of the flight with his head against my shoulder, still wearing the jersey.
He hadn't taken it off except to shower.
He had folded it carefully each night and set it on the chair beside his bed.
My husband sat across the aisle with his eyes closed, but I knew he wasn't sleeping.
His jaw was doing the thing it did when he was working through something he hadn't said yet.
We landed.
Collected our bags.
Drove home through gray afternoon light.
Ethan fell asleep again in the backseat.
When we pulled into our street, my husband said, without looking at me, "I keep thinking about the timeline."
"What about it?"
"Dr.
Yuen sent that file the same week she told us the treatment wasn't working." He slowed for a stop sign.
"She sat in that room with us.
She said the words.
And then she went home and did that."
"Yes."
"She carried that alone for six weeks."
"Yes."
He was quiet for a moment.
"I was angry at her," he said.
"After that appointment.
I didn't say it out loud, but I was.
I needed somewhere to put it."
"I know," I said.
"So did I."
He pulled into our driveway and turned off the engine.
Neither of us moved.
"She didn't owe us that," he said.
"What she did.
It was outside everything she was required to do."
"I know."
"I want to tell her that.
Properly.
Not just — I want her to know we understand what it cost her to sit on that and not say anything."
"We will," I said.
"We have time."
He looked at me when I said that.
The word landing between us the way it hadn't in a long time.
*Time.*
In the backseat, Ethan stirred.
"Are we home?" he said, voice thick with sleep.
"We're home," my husband said.
Ethan sat up and looked out the window at our house.
The ordinary front of it.
The same mailbox, the same cracked step on the porch we kept meaning to fix.
"Dad," he said.
"Yeah?"
"When do we go to the new hospital?"
My husband turned around in his seat.
"We have an appointment call with the doctors next Thursday.
They'll explain everything then."
Ethan nodded.
He looked at the house again.
"Do you think it'll work?" he said.
My husband didn't hesitate.
"I think the people in charge of your case are very, very good," he said.
"And I think you're tougher than anyone gives you credit for."
Ethan considered this seriously.
"That's not really a yes or a no."
"No," my husband said.
"It's not."
Ethan looked at him for a moment.
Then he nodded, as if that honest answer was the one he had actually wanted.
He pushed open the car door.
"Okay," he said.
"I'm hungry."
He walked up to the front door and waited for us to unlock it.
My husband and I looked at each other across the front seat.
"Okay," my husband said quietly.
An echo.
The same word Ethan had used in the stadium.
We got out of the car.
That night, after dinner, I sat at the kitchen table and opened my email.
There was a message from the hospital coordinator — intake forms, insurance documentation, a schedule for the Thursday call.
I started filling in the first form.
Halfway through, my phone buzzed with a text from a number I didn't recognize.
*You don't know me.
But I know about Ethan.
May you like
I need to talk to you before Thursday.
It's important.*
