Marcus sat down. He was standing in his kitchen and he sat down on the floor because that was what his legs decided. And he pressed the phone to his ear and said, "I'm coming. You don't have to. Emily, Marcus, you have Amara.
You have work. You Emily," he said it a third time clearly. Finally, "I'm coming. Tell me where you are." She was in the hospital. Same room, room 4:14.
He called Mrs. Patterson. It was 6:5 a.m. and she picked up on the second ring because she was 67 and slept lightly. And when Marcus said family emergency, she he said go before he'd finished the sentence. He was in his car at 6:11. He was at Mass General at 6:47.
Emily was in the corridor outside the room, sitting in one of the chairs against the wall, hands in her lap, still in the coat she'd worn to the hospital the night before when Richard had been sleeping and she'd stayed because she'd felt she should because something had told her to stay. She looked up when she heard Marcus's footsteps. When she saw him, something in her face broke open and then immediately tried to close itself again. Marcus sat down beside her. He didn't say anything.
He put his arm around her and she turned into his shoulder. And he held her the same way he'd held her on the train without condition, without agenda, simply steady while she cried in a hospital corridor at 6:49 in the morning. When she finally pulled back, she looked at him with swollen eyes and said, "He knew you were coming back." I told him. After our visit in December, she stopped. He said, "Good.
Don't let that one go." Marcus felt the words land somewhere permanent. He said, "You reminded him of himself at 34." Emily continued, "Before life got complicated, before he learned to lead with his defense," she wiped her face. He said, "He hoped you figured out faster than he did, that the defense is the thing that costs you the most." Marcus sat with that. "He was right," he said quietly. "He was almost always right," she laughed once, wet and exhausted.
I'm going to miss arguing with him about it. Tell me something else, Marcus said. Something good. Tell me one more good thing about him. She leaned against him.
She thought for a moment. He cried at commercials, she said. Dog food commercials, phone company commercials, the Hallmark stuff. He'd be sitting there pretending to read the paper and I'd look over and his eyes would be, you know, he'd say he had allergies. In December in Ohio, she shook her head.
He was the softest man I've ever known who genuinely believed he was tough. He sounds like someone I would have liked. Marcus said he liked you. She said he really did. She turned her head slightly.