"Don't," Dani said, and crossed the room in three steps. "Don't, Mom, don't move, don't—"
"Come here. Come here, baby. Come here." Lena reached out with the hand that didn't have the IV. "You picked bottom."
"I picked bottom."
"Bea must have had a heart attack."
"She told me to get out like you taught me."
"You did. You did. You got out." Lena was crying. "I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I'm so sorry I lied to you. I didn't know what else to—"
"Mom. Stop." Dani knelt on the floor beside the bed so their faces were level. She lifted the medal off her own neck, carefully, the ribbon catching on her ponytail, and slipped it over her mother's head, and settled the gold disk on the blanket against her mother's chest. "You were there," she said. "You were at the top. Dad and Rosie went up to your seat. I looked and you were there."
Lena looked past her, over her shoulder, at Tom standing in the doorway with Rosie asleep in his arms.
He didn't know what his face was doing. He didn't try to arrange it. He just stood there and let her look at him.
"You went to the top," Lena said.
"Rosie made me."
"Rosie," Lena said, with a wet laugh, "has always been the smartest person in this family."
Rosie, hearing her name, stirred against his shoulder, lifted her head, blinked twice at the room, and said, "Mama," in a voice of total certainty, as if she had known exactly where she would wake up. Tom set her down and she went straight to the bed and climbed up on the very edge of it, carefully, the way you'd climb onto a boat, and Lena winced and said "Easy, easy, baby," and Rosie said, "I know, you're sore, Daddy said," and lay down along the edge of the mattress with her head next to her mother's on the pillow.
"Mama," she said, "I took your paper. Off the fridge. I'm sorry."
"I wondered where that went."
"But I didn't tell till after."
"I know you didn't," Lena said. "I can tell by your sister's face."
* * *
Later—after Dani had told the whole match, move by move, twice; after Rosie had fallen asleep again, this time in the reclining chair with her coat over her and her new braid half fallen out—Dani went down to the cafeteria with Marisol to finally eat something that wasn't rice. And Tom was alone with his wife for the first time in seven months, in a room that smelled like antiseptic and the cheap carnations somebody from the dental office had sent.