Luke looked to June. She looked to the nurse. The nurse nodded, already moving back up the steps with me on her heels. The hallway was shallow-water quiet. The photo sat on the table like an anchor. I tucked it into my jacket, under the mail route map, where the important things lived, and jogged back.
“Rosa’s riding shotgun,” I said, pressing the frame into Mr. Alvarez’s hands. He cradled it against his Sunday plaid. The set of his mouth changed, not smile, not tears—place.
Room 213 held two sisters, one asleep, one alarmed. June slid into their doorway and made her voice a hallway lamp. “We’re going to the church. You’re in charge of snacks when we get there.”
“I’m eighty-one,” the awake one said, dignified even under a hairnet.
“Then you have the credentials,” June said, and the sister’s lips twitched.
Downstairs, the lobby became a harbor: quilts on wheelchairs, towels on shoulders, names called and answered. The captain didn’t raise her voice; she divided the line into jobs that made fear smaller. Luke carried, then doubled back. Rook turned straps into bridges where there weren’t any. I became a one-woman logistics chain: tanks on dolly, blankets on arms, photo frames in the map pocket of my jacket.
