"Yes, you can. We'll take one step at a time and we'll get through it. I'll do my best to make sure Ed receives the best care possible." We ended the embrace abruptly as the orderly from oncology came to take Ed up to his room.

"I'll check on him during my break," I told Sean as we got Ed ready to go upstairs.

Sean nodded. "Thanks, Meen. You know I appreciate it."

The orderly unlocked the wheels of Ed's gurney. "Bye, Dad, I'll be up to see you later."

Ed reached up and touched my face. "Bye, Mina, be a good girl." He patted my cheek.

I watched as the three of them headed down the hall toward the elevator. Once the doors closed behind them, my tears let loose.

CHAPTER TWO.

Finally getting home well past midnight, I fumbled with my apartment key in the lock. Some days were busier than others in the ER. That night, we had three auto accidents-one fatal-a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the thigh, five cases of viral gastro, three cases of chest pain, two that turned out to be indigestion and one resulting in cardiac arrest, and a near fatal bee sting. The paperwork alone took almost four hours to complete. It was my responsibility to make sure all the paperwork was done and done right. Just one more perk about being chief resident.

I tossed the key on the dining room table, where it bounced and slid off the other side. I was too tired to pick it up. I pushed the play button on the answering machine on the kitchen counter and started rooting around in my pathetically bare refrigerator. Pizza wrapped in aluminum foil from a few days before and a six-pack of Diet Coke were all that occupied the wire metal shelf.

"You have thirteen messages," the mechanical voice announced.

I passed on the pizza and popped the top off a Diet Coke and listened. The first message was from the figure: "Hello, Debbie..."

Debbie?

"...this is Sandra."

So that's her name.

"I thought we could get together tonight. Call me when you get in." Beep.

"Hi, Debbie, Sandra again. Just wondered what you thought about staying in tonight. How about pizza and a video? I rented Bar Girls and Personal Best...call me when you get in...it's seven forty-five." Beep.

The messages got shorter and more clipped until the last one at eleven fifty-three, said: "I don't know where you are or who you're with, but don't bother calling me...so...Goodbye!" I could hear the receiver being slammed down on the tape.

I didn't have the energy to deal with this right now, so I just erased the tape, chugged down the last of my Diet Coke, and dragged myself into the bedroom. I stripped off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor and climbed into bed. Unfortunately, sleep didn't come easy. Thoughts of Sean and Ed, little Timmy and the twenty-five other patients I treated during my shift reeled through my mind like the coming attractions in a movie theater.

I thought about Sandra, too. Even though the sex had been great, it felt empty. I didn't feel the need to see her again. It had been a long time since I'd felt anything more than just lust for anyone. Actually, it had been since Regan. Thinking about Regan was still too painful, and I had dealt with enough pain for one day. Just as I was about to drift off, the phone rang.

"Hello...hello?" I answered, my heart pounding in my chest from the adrenaline rush.

"Mina...oh, thank God you're home."

"Mom? Mom...Are you all right?" I pulled myself up in bed.

"Mina, you have to come get me and take me home...I've made a terrible mistake."

I heard a toilet flush in the background. "Where are you?"

"I'm at the Marriott Inn on Interstate 80."

"What are you doing at the Marriott?" I squinted at the clock radio on my nightstand. "It's...it's two o'clock in the morning."

"I had a little too much wine...I shouldn't have let him talk me into this...but he was such a good dancer..."

"Who's a good dancer? Mom, what the hell's going on?"

"It's not what you think. I thought I could...but when I came out of the bathroom and he was wearing horsey pajamas, I couldn't go through with it," my mother whispered.

"Mother, what are you talking about?"

I heard the flick of her Zippo lighter, then the deep drag on her cigarette. "He was wearing horsey pajamas...I couldn't go through with it. You know your father never wore pajamas..."

"I don't want to hear this." I closed my eyes tight, trying to block out the visual of my father and mother "together."

"Mina, you have to come get me."

"Mother, I'm not coming to get you." Boundaries...Boundaries...remember what your therapist said... "You got yourself in this mess...you can get yourself out. Tell whomever it is you're there with to take you home."

"Mina, I'm not sure he's even still out there. I've been holed up in this bathroom since midnight. Please, this isn't easy for me...Please?"

I got up and pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Thirty minutes later, I was sitting in the parking lot of the Marriott waiting for my delinquent mother. Finally, she emerged through the glass doors of the hotel lobby. She took one last drag on her cigarette and crushed it out with her heel before sliding into the passenger's seat. Neither of us could look the other in the eye.

"Thank you for coming to my rescue," she said, smoothing the pleats of her floral skirt.

I nodded.

"You're a good daughter." She patted my leg. My body tensed at her touch.

"Mother, since when do you go to hotels with men you hardly know?"

"It's not that I didn't know Zeke...It's just...well...I get lonely sometimes." She stared out the passenger side window. "It hasn't been easy for me since your father died," she said, fishing around in her purse. She pulled out a pack of Salem cigarettes. "Do you mind?" she asked, the cigarette poised between the index and middle finger of her right hand.

I shook my head. She rolled down the window and blew a plume of smoke into the humid night air.

My mother. While most kids would rummage through their mom's purses for treats like cookies or candy, I could always count on finding packs of Salem cigarettes and Beechnut peppermint gum in the bottom of hers. I don't ever remember a time when she didn't smoke. I remember when I was seven or eight years old, she sent me to the corner store with a note pinned to my shirt that read: "Please sell my daughter a carton of Salem cigarettes. Thank you, Mrs. Caselli."

She was barely forty when my Dad died of Lou Gehrig's disease, which left her to raise me, my brother, and my sister alone. I know it was tough for her. And sometimes it was tough for us, too. But she did a good job. I have to give her that. It was hard for me to imagine that she was lonely and missed that part of her life she lost along with my father. I guess in a way we were feeling the same way, and much to my surprise, I realized that we were coping with it in the same way, too.

I pulled into her driveway and kept the motor running.

"Aren't you coming in?" she asked.

"Mom, it's three thirty in the morning, I'd like to go home and get some sleep."

She looked down into her lap. "I'm sorry, Mina. I didn't know who else to call." The sincerity rang loud and clear in her voice.

"I know. It's okay. I'm just tired, that's all."

She patted my leg again. "Go home and get some rest. I promise not to get into any more trouble the rest of the night."

Her comment made me smile.

She got out of the car and walked up the front steps of my childhood home. One of the hardest things we as children learn is that our parents are no different than anyone else. They are people, too. With flaws and needs and desires. Parents are just as vulnerable as anybody else.

It was almost four o'clock by the time I crawled back into bed. My head hummed with exhaustion. Sleep finally came, deep and dreamless. I slept through the entire morning and early afternoon. When I woke up, I stayed in bed a little while longer, luxuriating in the quiet solitude. Then the door buzzer rang.

I pulled on my bathrobe and ran my fingers through my hair in an attempt to look somewhat presentable, then opened the door.

"Jesus, you look like crap," Rosetti said.

"Thanks."

"Rough day at the office?" Rosetti teased, stepping past me and inside my apartment.

I nodded, but Rosetti didn't see it. She was already in my kitchen, scrounging around in my refrigerator. I loved how Rosetti made every place she went her home. Her mother's place, where she was staying while her mother convalesced in the nursing home next door to my apartment, seemed almost like hers now. Before medical school, I was an RN at the nursing home. My apartment complex was really a place for assisted living, and the owners gave me a cut in rent in exchange for taking care of the elderly people who lived in the apartments. When I left the nursing home to go to medical school, they insisted I stay, even if I couldn't fulfill my obligations to the elderly residents anymore.

"What brings you out this way?" I asked.

"I stopped at the nursing home to see my mom before I went to work. They stuck me on these afternoons-to-graveyard shifts for the next month to do a surveillance thing."

"How is your mom doing? I haven't been over to the nursing home to see her in a couple of weeks."

"She's doing well. They gave her another blood transfusion last Tuesday. It seems to have really perked her up," Rosetti said, rummaging through my kitchen cabinets. "You know you should try and get to a grocery store every once in a while. There's nothing in here that's edible."

"There's some cold pizza in the refrigerator," I shouted from the bedroom where I changed into cutoffs and a T-shirt.

"You want some?" she shouted back. "I'll heat it up in the toaster oven."

"Sure, I'll take a slice," I said, emerging from the bedroom.

Rosetti came out of the kitchen with two pieces of Briar Hill pizza on flimsy white paper plates. We sat on the floor in front of the television and ate.

"So how was your shift last night?" Rosetti asked.

"Unreal," I said, taking a bite.

"Because of work?"

"Partially. They had me work peds again. Then Sean came in with his dad."

"Is everything all right?"

"Unfortunately, no. Ed's chest X-ray showed a huge lung tumor. He's got six weeks if he's lucky."

"Wow, I'm sorry to hear that. How's Sean holding up?"

"Not good. I told him I wouldn't let him go through it alone."

"Mina, you're something else," Rosetti said with a mouth full of pizza.

"What do you mean?"

"You've been divorced from the guy for over five years now, and you're still willing to take on something like this. I've gotta give you a lot of credit. Most ex-wives wouldn't be so gracious."

"Sometimes I feel like I'm all he's got. His only brother died when he was sixteen. He hasn't seen his mother for almost ten years. His dad is his only family, and now he's gonna lose him. I can't let him go through it alone."

"You don't have to convince me," Rosetti said. "I know how you were with my mom when she was really ill. I don't know what I'd have done if you weren't there. Sean's pretty lucky to have you in his corner like that."

My face flushed. Even after all this time in nursing and now in medicine, it was still hard for me to take a compliment. I needed to change the subject.

"So what's this surveillance assignment they've got you on?"

"I'm working with some of the guys at the DEA. They've been watching a couple of crack houses over on the north side of town. The hours suck, but the pay is great."

"Yes, but is it safe?"

"As safe as it gets when you're hunkered down in the backseat of a '72 Firebird, watching drug dealers all night. Sure, something can always go wrong, but it's not like I'm sitting out there alone. There are three other agents out there with me, Steve Templeton, Randy Wilson, and Pam Grier. I've worked with each of them before. Pam has worked a lot of vice and decoy work. I've really learned a lot from her. Each of them has a specialty and knows what they're doing," Rosetti said, trying to calm my fears.

"I know, but I still worry about you. You don't know the stuff I see working in the ER. It's pretty gruesome."

"Did you worry about Sean this much when you guys were still married?"

"Not really. When we were married, he mostly worked crime scenes. He never got called until after the fact. But what you're doing is another story."

Rosetti went into the kitchen to warm up another piece of pizza.

"Let me tell you about the rest of my day," I shouted into the kitchen.

She returned with another slice, this one a little too well done, but that didn't stop her from chowing down. "Go ahead, I'm all ears." She took a bite of the piping hot pizza.

"I get home last night, I'm so tired I can't see straight. I get into bed and finally doze off and the phone rings. It's my mother."

"Oh?" Rosetti asked, taking another bite.

"She wants me to come and get her. She's at the Marriott on the highway with some guy named Zeke."

"What! You've got to be kidding," Rosetti said, spitting pizza crumbs in my direction.

"Would I kid about something like that? I couldn't think up something that bizarre. You're so lucky your mother's in the nursing home."

"My mother's eighty-four," Rosetti said with a laugh. "You're mom is what...fifty-one...fifty-two...and obviously still in her prime."

"I can't take it. You know, there are some things you don't want to know about your parents."