Noreen waited nearly forty minutes before she finally slid into the car.


    By the time she got home, it was already past midnight.


    What a long, exhausting day.


    She forced herself to take a hot shower, but when she stepped out, she couldn’t even muster the energy to dry her hair. Copsing onto her bed, she was asleep almost instantly.


    Thankfully, the next two days were the weekend. For once, Noreen let herself sleep in without an rm.


    After waking, she simmered a pot of chicken soup and got ready to visit Rosalind at the hospital.


    She’d barely stepped out the door when she ran into the cleaningdy from the building, who was muttering under her breath. “Who smokes in the stairwell? Some people have no manners, honestly.”


    Rosalind was doing much better–she looked far more energetic than before.


    After finishing her soup, Rosalind quietly suggested she wanted to be discharged,ining that the hospital felt stifling.


    But Noreen knew the real reason: Rosalind was worried about the bills.


    “That’s <i>not </i>up to me,” Noreen said gently. “We have to listen to the doctor. When they say you’re ready to leave, then you can leave.”


    Rosalind fell silent. It was clear she’d already tried, unsessfully, to convince the <i>doctors </i>and was now hoping Noreen would take her side.


    “If you’re bored, I can take you out for a walk, get some fresh air. The weather’s not great, though.”


    It had rained off and on through the night, and the temperature had dropped noticeably.


    <b>1/3 </b>


    21-24


    Noreen walked with Rosalind through the park next to the hospital. When they happened to pass a young couple posing for wedding photos, Rosalind’s steps slowed.


    She gazed at the couple, eyes full of longing, probably imagining what her own daughter would look like in a wedding dress.


    A pang twisted in Noreen’s chest.


    “Noreen, when are you and Seth going to take your wedding photos?” Rosalind asked, her eyes hopeful.


    Noreen’s throat tightened. “He… he’s just been so busytely. We haven’t set a date yet.”


    Rosalind sighed softly. “Seth is always busy, I know. But you two have been together for seven years. People say the longer you date, the less likely you are to actually get married. I just worry something might change<i>.” </i>


    Her words hit Noreen like a needle straight to the heart.


    But it wasn’t fear of losing Seth that hurt the most.


    What really stung was that, at twenty–something years old, she was still making her sick mother worry about her.


    Rosalind had raised Noreen on her own.


    She’d gotten pregnant before marriage, and her image–conscious parents had thrown her out, cutting off all contact for years.


    When Rosalind gave birth to Noreen, she suffered massive blood loss. The doctors barely managed to save her, but the ordeal left her with lingering health problems.


    When she was younger, Rosalind had powered through–working to support them both, raising Noreen by herself.


    But as the years went by, her body grew weaker.


    When Noreen was in middle school, Rosalind fell gravely ill.


    21-24T


    It was right before Noreen’s entrance exams. Not wanting to distract her, Rosalind kept her hospitalization a secret, spending over two weeks in the hospital without telling her daughter.


    Noreen only found out after the exams, when she finally came home.


    During high school, Rosalind became a regr at the hospital, her health deteriorating day by day.


    She made the doctors promise not to tell Noreen the truth, only letting her believe it was anemia from poor nutrition.


    In reality, it was severe astic anemia–a life–threatening condition.


    It wasn’t until Noreen’s senior year, when the hospital issued a critical notice, that she finally learned the truth.


    To Noreen, Rosalind was her whole world.


    When that world threatened to copse, she experienced, for the first time, the true terror of losing someone to death.


    The doctors said Rosalind needed an urgent bone marrow transnt.


    For weeks, Noreen searched everywhere for apatible donor, even turning–secretly–to the Gilmore family, her estranged rtives.


    Not a single one of them agreed to get tested.


    Noreen knelt outside the Gilmore mansion for a day and a night, but not once did anyone open the door.


    <b>3/3 </b>