Sarah Shun-lien Bynum

You have to let her.

We can't wait while you figure out what to do.

Had I ever seen my mother cheat like this?

I understood that she was cheating for my sake.

But if he died because of us, what then?

I was sure we'd never forget.

Though I think now that people do forget such things.

The nurse was stumped for a few seconds.

Hey, Edward, I said, and I shook his shoulder, in a rough way, as if I were just a kid making fun of him.

It hurt my leg when I moved.

The man made a choking, burbling sound, desperate and liquid.

He terrified us then.

He was alive, but he was a dying monster.

The nurse got an orderly to move him onto a gurney, and she was wheeling him away from us before we knew what was happening.

And then we had to wait again.

I left there with a huge plaster cast on my leg, and I looked forward to having all my friends sign it.

I had broken and splintered my tibia in a fairly major way.

But what I took from that night most of all was the shock at the man walking out on his unconscious friend, the silent story of it.

My mother said the man probably had reasons we couldn't know, which was definitely true, but what I held on to was the lasting certainty that I was going to have to look out for myself.

It wasn't my mother's fault.