I was recovering in the hospital after a car accident when my mother-in-law brought my husband’s little son to visit. He handed me orange juice and whispered : “Grandma said that after you drinks this, you’ll sleep forever, and then Dad will bring Mom home.”. My mother-in-law quietly pretended she didn’t notice… and that’s what scared me the most.

Pain is not a sensation; it is a geography. For the last three days, I had lived in the country of Agony, a landscape defined by the shattered tibia in my left leg and the three fractured ribs that turned every breath into a negotiation. The hospital room was my entire world—a white, sterile box that smelled of antiseptic and the aggressive, cloying scent of Stargazer lilies.

Martha, my mother-in-law, had brought them. Of course she had. Lilies were funeral flowers.