Laura
Hospitals had a smell you never forgot.
No matter how beautiful the building was, no matter how expensive the artwork hanging on the walls or how comfortable they tried to make the rooms, every hospital carried the same scent. Antiseptic. Fresh linens. Coffee that had been sitting too long. Underneath it all lingered something impossible to describe—a mixture of hope and fear.
I hated that smell.
It reminded me too much of sitting beside my mother’s hospital bed, praying every time another doctor walked through the door that they would finally have good news.
Now, months later, I found myself walking down another hallway with that same knot in my stomach.
Samuel had insisted his treatments were “just making him tired.”
He’d smiled through every family dinner, every visit with
