The next part changes everything.
But nothing happened.
No calls.
No texts.
Just silence.
I told myself that meant they had figured something else out. Maybe another donor had been found. Maybe the doctors were trying new treatments. Maybe my husband was too busy at the hospital to deal with me.
Two weeks passed before guilt finally pushed me to drive home.
I told myself I was just checking in.
Just seeing how things were going.
But the moment I stepped inside the house, my stomach dropped.
The living room walls were covered in drawings.
CommissionCustom Prints
Dozens of them.
Maybe hundreds.
Messy, uneven sketches taped up with pieces of white medical tape. Crayon marks ran across the paper like storms of color.
Stick figures with giant heads.
A tall man.
A smaller boy.
And next to them, a woman with long hair.
GetLanguage Courses
Above every drawing, written in shaky letters, was the same
word.
“Mom.”
My throat tightened.
I walked closer, noticing how the drawings changed slightly from one to the next. In some, the boy was holding the woman’s hand. In others, they stood in front of a house. One showed the three figures beneath a huge yellow sun.
read more in next page
All of them labeled the same way.
Mom.
I hadn’t even noticed my husband standing behind me.
“You came back,” he said quietly.
I turned to him. He looked exhausted—eyes hollow, shoulders slumped like he hadn’t slept in days.
“What… what is all this?” I whispered.
He didn’t answer immediately.
Instead, he walked me down the hallway to the small bedroom at the end.
Bedroom
My steps slowed when I saw the hospital bed set up inside.
Machines hummed softly. Tubes snaked across the blankets.
And there he was.
My stepson.
So pale.
Comments (0)