He grabbed his pack, got out, and found his way up to the fourth floor. His sister was at the nursing station talking with a nurse. When she saw him, she broke off the conversation and hurried into his arms, clutching him tight to her feather-light body. For a minute he thought the worst had happened, that their mother had suddenly passed, but when she pulled back and studied him with her soft blue eyes, he relaxed and drank in the long Patterson family face. She’d lost weight she didn’t need to lose since the last time he saw her three years ago.
At last, she patted his shoulder. “Come.”
She led him down the hallway under the hum and glare of fluorescent lights, past idle x-ray machines, portable medical documentation stations, and janitorial carts to the wide sliding glass doors of the
