We’d been in that waiting room since before sunrise. The chairs were stiff. The air too cold. The TV in the corner playing an old holiday movie with the sound off. But none of it mattered. Because she was there. And I was holding her. The nurses offered blankets. One even brought a pillow. They asked if she wanted a cot, maybe a stretcher to lie down on.

She shook her head. She didn’t want to be anywhere else. So she leaned into me—head on my chest, fingers curled tightly around mine. To most people, she probably looked like someone’s grandmother. Tired. Sick. Dressed in a sky-blue tracksuit that had seen better days. Fragile in that way age tends to be.

But no one there knew the truth. No one knew she was once the strongest person I’d ever known. No one knew this was the woman who sat beside me through every fever, every scraped knee, every heartbreak I swore I’d never survive. No one knew this was the lap I cried in when I didn’t make the team. The arms that held me when Dad left.

The voice that read the same bedtime story for 142 nights straight because I couldn’t fall asleep without it. She didn’t speak much that day. Just whispered my name every so often—soft, like she needed to be sure I was still there. And I was.

I had promised.

Promised her I wouldn’t leave.
Not until the doctors told us something.
Not until the new meds kicked in.
Not until she said it was okay to go.

So I held her like she once held me.

And time just… paused.