All the Skies We Never Shared

When my husband, Derek, shattered his leg in a freak hiking accident, my mother dropped everything at her small farm in upstate Pennsylvania and took the first bus into the city.

For thirty-one straight days, she didn’t take a single full night of sleep. She massaged his swollen calf when the phantom nerve pain flared up at two in the morning. She boiled rich bone broths at dawn, scouring the local butchers for the freshest cuts just to speed up his recovery. By the time Derek walked out of the rehabilitation clinic on his own two feet, my mother had lost nearly twelve pounds. Her collarbones stuck out like sharp ridges beneath her faded cotton blouses.

On the afternoon of his final discharge, Derek gripped my mother’s calloused hands right in front of the attending doctors and nurses, his voice thick with performative emotion.