I shook my head. “That doesn’t justify hiding this.”
“No,” she said. “Maybe it doesn’t.”
The honesty disarmed me.
She took a slow breath.
“But I watched you disappear for almost a year, Ethan. After the miscarriages, you couldn’t look at the nursery catalogs. You couldn’t talk about doctors. You couldn’t even say the word baby without going quiet. And every time I tried to reach for you, you pulled farther away.”
I stared at the floor.
She wasn’t wrong.
“I didn’t know how to help you,” she continued. “Then I got the diagnosis, and all I could think was that if I told you, you would stay out of guilt.”
I looked up sharply.
“That’s what you thought of me?”
“No,” she said softly. “That’s what I thought of myself.”
I didn’t understand at first.
Then her eyes met mine.
“I didn’t want to become another tragedy you felt trapped inside.”
Those words cracked something open in me.
For months, I had believed Sophie’s silence meant she didn’t care enough to fight for us. I had mistaken her restraint for acceptance. Her calmness for indifference.
But maybe she had been carrying a terror so large there was no room left for protest.
“Sophie,” I said, “I wouldn’t have stayed out of guilt.”
Her mouth trembled.
“You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Ethan.” She gave a tired, aching laugh. “You left before you even knew.”
I had no answer.
The door opened again, and Dr. Keller returned with a nurse.
“Sophie,” he said, firmer this time, “now.”
She nodded.
The nurse moved to help her stand, but before they guided her inside, Sophie looked back at me.
“You should go visit whoever you came here to see,” she said.
The sentence was polite.
Too polite.
It was the voice people used with acquaintances.
“Sophie, I’m not leaving.”
Her eyes darkened.
“You don’t get to come back because you feel bad.”
The words were quiet, but they stopped me cold.
“I know,” I said.
“Do you?”
I wanted to say yes. I wanted to tell her that I understood everything now. That I understood the pain, the fear, the loneliness, the impossible choices.
But I didn’t.
Not yet.
Maybe not at all.
So I told the truth.
“No,” I said. “But I want to.”
She studied me for a long second.
Then the nurse guided her through the door, and she disappeared into the room.
I remained in the hallway, staring at the empty chair where she had been sitting.
For several minutes, I did nothing.
I didn’t visit my best friend.
I didn’t move.
I simply stood there while the life I thought I understood rearranged itself into something I barely recognized.
Eventually, I walked to the nurses’ station.
A young nurse glanced up from her computer. “Can I help you?”
“I’m here for Sophie Miller,” I said.
The nurse typed something. “Are you family?”
The word caught in my throat.
Two months ago, the answer would have been simple.
Now it was a legal question, and legally, I was nothing.
“I’m her…” I stopped.
Her what?
Ex-husband sounded too small.
The man who left her sounded too honest.
“I’m Ethan,” I said finally.
The nurse’s expression changed with recognition, but she didn’t say anything.
“I just want to know if she needs anything,” I added. “I know you can’t share information with me. I understand that. But if there’s something I can bring her, or someone I should call—”
The nurse looked past me toward Sophie’s room.
Then she lowered her voice.
“She hasn’t been eating much,” she said. “She likes peppermint tea. Not the cafeteria kind. There’s a shop two blocks over.”
It was such a small piece of information.
And yet it nearly undid me.
Peppermint tea.
Sophie drank it whenever she was anxious. She used to make it at night in our kitchen, wrapping both hands around the mug while steam curled against her face.
I nodded.
“Thank you.”
I went to see my friend, but I barely remember the conversation. Mark was propped against pillows, pale but alert after surgery, and he noticed immediately that something was wrong.
“Man,” he said, narrowing his eyes, “you look worse than I do.”
I tried to smile.
It didn’t work.
“I saw Sophie.”
Mark’s expression softened. “Here?”
I nodded.
“In a patient gown.”
He was quiet for a moment.
Then he said, “You didn’t know?”
The room seemed to shrink.
I stared at him.
“What?”
Mark closed his eyes briefly. “Ethan…”
“You knew?”
His silence answered for him.
I stepped back from the bed.
“You knew Sophie was sick?”
