You find an old man who locks the door to protect the woman he loves.
You find a nurse who moved her whole life to catch the woman who once caught her.
And you find out that the things we’re most afraid of losing, the faces and the names and the memories, aren’t the deepest part of us at all.
The deepest part is the room we keep.
The one where we were the bravest. The most ourselves. The one where somebody needed us, and we came running through the storm.
And if you’re lucky, if you love somebody long enough and well enough, that’s the room the forgetting can’t get into.
That’s the last room.
That’s Room 18.
Before we left the next morning, I went into the bathroom one more time.
I picked up one of the white towels from the stack on the edge of the old pink tub.
