NANA WAS ALIVE. That’s what mattered; it was all I cared about right now. But I did wonder why it was that when you lose someone or are about to lose someone important to you, they become more precious than ever.
It was hell waiting for her to come back from tests at the hospital. I had to sit for hours in a sterile, fluorescent-lit corridor, while my mind ran through every possible worst-case scenario, a bad habit of mine from work. I tried to fill my head with memories of Nana, going all the way back to when I was ten and she had replaced my parents in my life.
When they finally wheeled her out, it was a gift just to look into her eyes. She’d been unconscious when we arrived, and there had been no guarantee I would ever see her alive again.
But here she was, and she was talking.
“Gave you a little scare there, did I?” Her voice was weak and wheezy, and she looked even tinier than usual sitting up on the gurney, but she was alert.
“More than a little scare,” I said. It was all I could do to keep from squeezing the life right back out of her. I settled for a lingering kiss on the cheek.
“Welcome back, old woman,” I whispered in her ear—just to make her smile, which it did.
“Good to be back. Now, let’s get out of here!”