The nurse smiled at me. “You holding up okay?”

“Yeah,” I said.

But something about the way she spoke to Mom stayed with me. Calm and steady, as if sickness didn’t scare her.

On the taxi ride home, I told Mom, “I think I want to be a nurse.”

She looked at me with tired eyes. “You’d be a good one.”

Mom handled her diagnosis like a boss and actually survived.

“You’d be a good one.”

***

The doctors said the word “remission” when I was 19. It felt like someone had finally opened a window after years in a dark room.

Jason graduated from high school. I finished nursing school. Life slowly started moving forward again.

And Dad? He disappeared. We heard things here and there. Someone said he married Brittany. Someone else said that he started a consulting business. But he never called, wrote, or showed up.

Eventually, we stopped expecting him to.

And Dad? He disappeared.

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