When Sarah’s mother, Penny, got sick four years into our marriage, we decided to move back to Mississippi, considering it penance for the sins of our youth. We signed a lease on a house, a white one-story on the historical register with a wraparound porch and angels, stars, and the moon painted on the transom above the front door.

In July my wife, Sarah, started working at the hospital where her mother had recently died. It was the last place she wanted to be, and we had enough in savings that she didn’t have to work, but after wandering around the house for a few weeks, she’d decided it was better than the alternative. She worked nights in Labor and Delivery, seven to seven, and slept during the day, waking in the afternoons dehydrated and feeling like she hadn’t slept at all.

I spent the days with my father. First I’d pick Sarah up from the hospital and take her home to sleep. Then I’d meet my father at Hardee’s to drink coffee, eat sausage biscuits, and plan the day. When he wasn’t scheduled for chemo, we would work in his garden or go to his church, where he had a part-time job as custodian, and I’d help him vacuum and scrub toilets. On Wednesdays, when he had a treatment, we skipped Hardee’s and went straight to the hospital. I read magazines and watched The Today Show in the lobby while the IV dripped into his veins. He refused to let me go in to support him, refused to act like a sick man or be treated like one. From there we went back to his house and played dominoes and watched the Turner Classic Movies channel until late afternoon. Thursdays we’d lie low as well, but he usually felt like himself again by Friday. On any given day I saw way too much of the hospital.

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