Erick
The sun felt warm on the hospital glass as I stepped out, and for the first time in weeks a small, private part of me hummed quiet, nearly embarrassed at how ordinary the sound was.
It slipped out of my chest like a boyish thing I hadn’t allowed myself in years. The world, for a breath, seemed softer: the scrubbed blue of the sky, the hush of nurses’ footsteps carrying on inside, and the tiny, fierce beating of two new heartbeats tucked somewhere within these walls.
For somewhere between guilt and redemption I’d found a strange, fierce peace.
The pups, sleeping now under careful watch, had taken the rawest edges off something that had been jagged and sharp for so long.
I could still taste the memory of pain her pain, Sophia’s screams, the scenes of my past I had run from a t
