Chapter 69

The air inside the small hospital office was unusually tense. The hum of the air conditioner and the faint clicking of the doctor’s keyboard filled the silence. Leonard sat hunched forward, his cough rattling his chest, while his wife, Clara, leaned back with her arms folded, her face a mask of control. Calm, but not without a storm brewing beneath.

For weeks Leonard had been battling the fever, the recurring cough, the fatigue that medicines never seemed to cure. Clara had insisted he return for another round of tests. He resisted at first, dismissing her with a wave of his hand and excuses about stress, about the weather, about anything except himself. But when his condition worsened, she dragged him, quite literally, to her own hospital for a proper test.

Now, fifty long minutes later, after blood samples and urine tests, after questions that pricked deeper than needles, they sat waiting. It was the kind of waiting that stretched time into an eternity. Leonard’s cough