Mum rang twice

Sue rang twice in one day, which she does not do. She is a once-a-week-on-Sunday person and has been my whole life, so by the second missed call I already knew. Dad went in on Tuesday with chest pain. They kept him overnight, ran everything, and sent him home Wednesday afternoon. Nobody told me until it was over. She said she did not want to worry me while I was working. I said that is not a thing you get to decide. Then I apologised for the tone, which I did not entirely mean, and then I got off the phone and cried in the pantry with the door shut because Danny was on a call with the Caldwell people in the next room. Four minutes. Then I washed my face and went and sat on the arm of the couch until his call finished and told him, and he was good about it. He asked the right questions in the right order — what did they actually say, what are the next steps, when is the follow-up — which is what I needed and not what I wanted, and I could not have told you at the time which of those I was short of. They are calling it a warning. Rich Bennett is sixty six years old and has never once in my life said he was tired.

For someone to say that is frightening, out loud, first. Before the plan. He gets to the plan very fast because the plan is how he looks after people. I know that. I have known that for seven years. It is just that tonight I wanted thirty seconds of somebody else being scared about it so I did not have to be the only one holding that part.