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knew that she wasn’t promising me that Gray wouldn’t die, only that they’d do their best to try to save him.
    What if their best wasn’t good enough?
    Losing Gray would devastate me. I realized that if anyone else knew about the papers in my hand, they’d wonder at my thought, but there was a vast difference between divorce and death.
    Both had a finality associated with them, but death was an absolute. With a divorce, I’d still have a chance of bumping into Gray around town. I’d read articles in the paper about Steel, Inc. and they’d mention him. They’d maybe include a picture. Friends might tell me his latest news.
    If we just divorced, I’d be able to go to sleep at night knowing Gray was somewhere out in the city doing something . . . even if it wasn’t with me.
    But now he was somewhere in this maze of pastel-walled halls and might not ever leave them alive.
    The nurse led me through a doorway into another waiting room. More televisions hung overhead, and fake potted plants punctuated the corners. I knew they weren’t real because this was a windowless room in the bowels of the hospital. It was as if the staff wanted to shut away all of us who were waiting. As if they didn’t want the rest of the visitors to witness our anxiety, our pain, and sometimes our grief.
    “Here you go, ma’am. There are drinks here,” she said, pointing to a table. “Please help yourself. It will be a couple of hours at the very least,” she said gently.
    “Is this one of those heart procedures where you thread a catheter through a vein? I’m sure the doctor said, but I’m having trouble—” I stopped. That about summed it up. I was having trouble with all of this.
    I, who had a head for numbers and names—
    I, who had an internal clock and calendar—
    I couldn’t seem to keep track of what time it was, just as I couldn’t grasp the name or description of Gray’s problem. His heart. That’s all I could seem to cling to.
    Something—not a heart attack—was wrong with his heart.
    I twisted the envelope tighter.
    I’d expected to go into the office, hand Gray the papers. I expected him to see the logic in the terms I’d had the lawyer insert. I was leaving him the bulk of our assets. I was honest when I acknowledged that the majority of the money for them came from Steel, Inc.
    I’d thought I’d hand him the papers, he’d sign them, and I’d walk out well on my way to being divorced. That’s what I expected.
    Not this. Not talk of surgery and death.
    “It’s open-heart surgery, ma’am,” the nurse said gently.
    “Oh. Okay.”
    She reached out and patted my shoulder—this young girl who had to be freshly graduated. “Just make yourself comfortable. Someone will come find you as soon as we have any news.”
    “Thank you.” That sense of politeness was so ingrained that the words came automatically to my lips. I wondered if they sounded as superficial to her as they did to me.
    I didn’t want to thank this girl who looked at me with such sympathy.
    I didn’t want to thank her for leading me to this room that was tucked up in the depths of the hospital, hidden away from the rest of the visitors.
    I didn’t want to thank her for assuring me she’d come tell me if my husband was dead.
    And yet the words fell unbidden from my lips.
    She didn’t seem to sense my antipathy. She gave me another of her sympathetic looks. “Can I call someone for you?”
    That phrase.
    I’d heard that phrase before.
    I’d been a freshman at college and practically crawled into the campus health department.
    “It’s the flu,” the nurse there had proclaimed. “It’s making the rounds. Can I call someone for you?”
    “Gray,” I said and rattled off his number.
    It wasn’t even fifteen minutes later that he strode into the room. “You should have called me sooner. I could have brought you here.”
    Normally I’d bristle and remind him for the umpteenth time that I was capable of taking care of myself. But