of the month.
“I don’t care about the bank, Ben,” I said, my thumb still tracing the edge of my silver band. “I care about you.”
“I know, kid,” he said, his fingers resuming their slow drumming against the hospital sheet. “But we have to be practical. Tomorrow afternoon, then.”
“We’ve been neighbors since we were seven,” I said, looking at the faded wallpaper continue reading …
of the room. “We should have done this a long time ago.”
“We’re doing it now, kid,” he said. “That’s what matters.”
I nodded, the silence of the room settling over us like a heavy blanket, broken only by the rhythmic beep of the heart monitor.
The next afternoon, the elevator down to the basement was cold and smelled of floor wax. I pushed Ben’s wheelchair continue reading …
through the heavy double doors, the rubber tires squeaking on the smooth gray tiles.
The light through the stained-glass window of the basement chapel cast long, purple bruises of color across the wooden altar. It was a small, windowless room that smelled of damp concrete and the cedar oil they used to polish the pews.
Chaplain Thomas continue reading …
stood behind the altar, his black cassock smelling faintly of old paper and candle wax. He was a small man with thin white hair that drifted over his ears like cobwebs, and he kept his hands folded over a small leather-bound book.
Ben sat in his wheelchair beside me, his legs covered by a heavy gray blanket, though he had insisted on wearing his polished continue reading …
