“Urgent.”
He said it quietly, but the word hit the room like a door slamming shut.
The doctor kept one hand on the phone while the other still held the ultrasound probe in place. My mother looked from him to me, and for the first time since I had dragged her out of the house, she stopped pretending this was nothing.
“Is it cancer?” she asked.
The doctor did not give her the easy answer. He asked the nurse for a second set of images, then turned the screen slightly away, not to hide it cruelly, but because even he seemed to need one more second before speaking.
At 8:46 a.m., a senior physician stepped into the doorway with a chart tucked under his arm. Behind him came a nurse carrying a sealed imaging request and a red hospital wristband that had not been there before.
