Guilt perhaps.
Or embarrassment.
Then habit took over.
He stepped aside.
“Going up?”
Willa entered.
Pressed four.
Already illuminated.
The doors closed.
Fourteen seconds.
Neither spoke.
Garrett adjusted his tie.
Willa watched the floor indicator.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Doors opened.
Garrett stepped out first and turned toward the ballroom.
Willa turned toward the green room.
He never looked back.
Inside the green room, a monitor showed the ballroom filling.
Four hundred twenty seats.
Almost all occupied.
Willa placed the iPad on the table.
Poured water.
Sat.
Then thought of Gloria.
Her mother had worked nights for three decades.
Patients trusted her.
Families remembered her.
New doctors often mistook her for support staff even after she had spent twenty years on the same cardiac floor.
Once, when Willa was seventeen, Gloria came home furious.
A resident had spoken over her while she tried to explain that an elderly patient’s condition had changed.
Later, after the patient deteriorated exactly as Gloria warned, the same resident described the discovery during rounds as though it had been his.
Willa expected her mother to complain.
Gloria removed her shoes.