Then she took it.
“You stubborn old woman,” she said. And then she was crying too.
Ruth laughed through her tears.
“That’s what Evelyn’s grandson called her too,” she said. “About an hour ago. I heard him.”
Catherine looked over at me. And for the first time, almost, she smiled.
“I’m sorry I was rude to your grandmother,” she said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “You didn’t know.”
“I’ve been sitting in that family waiting room by myself for a week,” she said. “I thought I was the only family she had.”
“You’re not,” I said. “Not anymore.”
Ruth didn’t go to Chicago.
Catherine called the hospice herself and canceled the transfer. She called her husband and told him to bring the kids down for the weekend. She moved into the hotel across the street. And she sat in Room 214 every day, right next to the window, holding her mother’s hand.
