Everything I needed to reach in Willow Heights, I could do on my feet. It hadn’t always been that way. My mother’s old place had been in a shadier section; just far enough that walking would take too long. Hector’s shop and the apartment I’d help renovate were in the center of town, and all points of interest or necessity I could reach in a ten-minute walk. If I was hungry, I needed only to cross the street and sit at one of Hawk’s counter stools. If I needed groceries, I could fill my canvas bags six shops down at Nettie’s General Store. And if I ever got sick or hurt something that required more than a Band-Aid, I could get myself to Reynolds Memorial Hospital in under seven blocks.

But it was Christmas morning, and the snow was coming in sheets now. The sidewalks were slick and icy, and the wind bit through me like whip as I tugged up my leather coat and pulled my beanie over my eyebrows. The frigid temperatures and wet snow was easier to face than my father and all the advice he had no right giving me.

I leaned against a light pole half way between the hospital and the strip of businesses that made up Main Street. Just a few blocks in front of me, Reynolds Memorial loomed large and bright. The wide stucco and brick building was only three stories, but expanded across nearly five acres and held two ambulance bays and a wide ER doorway. Snow collected on the awning at the front entrance and along the thick, pre-lit garland with white and colored lights that covered the doors, windows and covered walk way columns.

All that snow, all the glittering Christmas accoutrements should have made me feel something similar to the good vibes the smiling, sweet family had just an hour before. It did not. Nothing would, especially not that hospital.

Once, not long ago, Iris had been there. Sick, nearing something that could have killed her. Without thinking, I found myself walking toward the entrance, dusting snow from my shoulders as I made it into the lobby. As habit, I pushed up the large sunglasses that covered my face and tugged up the collar on my coat. I didn’t need the attention I usually got when I went out in town.

Despite the holiday, the hospital was busy; nurses in gray and green scrubs scurried around the hallways, offering smiles or long looks of recognition, but otherwise didn’t stop to watch. There were groups of families toward the right wing of the hospital, a place I knew was meant for the old folks, those dying or close to it. Off to the back of that wing was the nursery and beyond that the physician’s offices, but I headed toward the right, bypassing a group of girls no more than twelve who giggled when I nodded at them, then stopped walking altogether to whisper about me over the low hum of elevator music.

“Is that him?”

“Has to be. No one else in town dresses like that.”

“He looks tired.”

“Who cares, he’s still hot.”

“My sister said he’s nasty.”

“Yeah, well, your sister is nasty, too.”

It didn’t matter what a bunch of kids thoughts of me. I’d stopped worrying about the Midwestern horde a long damn time ago. In fact, I gave zero fucks about any hordes at all. People will judge you no matter who you are or what you do. May as well do what you want anyway.

“Can I help you?” a plump nurse with gray hair asked when I approached the nurse’s station on the second floor unit. I was familiar with this place. Juanita had tried it out at least five times before. I’d paid for each go.

“Juanita Vega.”

The woman didn’t have to look at a chart or thumb through folders to find my mother’s room. There was a brief shift of pity that moved across her face before she forced a smile and nodded toward the end of the hallway. 214. Last room on the right, down that hall.

I nodded, wondering what kept at me to worry about her. So many times I’d been at this desk asking the question that stuck in the back of my throat. It felt familiar, being here, wondering if she’d survive. Wondering how much damage this overdose, this round of alcohol poisoning had done to my mother.

The nurse watched me as I took a step back, shoving the sunglasses further up my nose, angling my gaze toward the hallway before I moved. “She’s better today,” the woman offered, lowering her voice. “I’ve been here twenty years. Juanita isn’t a stranger to me.”

I could only nod, wondering if I should just leave. Wondering what walking into that room would do to me. To her. I’d kept away a long time. Had to. She needed to learn how to stand on her own. And no matter what she’d allowed to happen to me or how careless she’d always been, she was still my mama. She was the only one I’d ever have.

“Thanks,” I told the nurse, turning toward the hallway, toward my mother.

The tile was white, sterile but clean as I moved across it, taking slow steps as I came closer to room 214. There were handrails made of some soft-looking plastic in the center of the walls and carts of equipment and lunches, turkey and dressing from the looks of it, were parked between each door and half way in some of the rooms.

It was nearly two in the afternoon. Christmas day. Decorations of red and green, of Santa drawings and drapes of silver garland covered the walls. Holiday cheer had come to the detox floor as though it was normal for addicts and their families to spend Christmas among the rail thin patients with I.V.s protruding from their veins.

I slipped a glance into the rooms as I passed, catching glimpses of those patients, forcing smiles, looking as though it took mammoth effort not to cry or beg to go home. Just two doors from my mother’s room, a young girl lay in her bed, unconscious, her body covered with a thin hospital blanket and a thicker, festive Rudolph throw that a boy around her age tucked under her legs.

He doted on her, leaning forward with his elbows on her bed and one hand stretched toward her forehead, brushing the hair from her face. I recognized the look he gave her. I understood the worry. Whoever those kids were, they caught my attention, and I stopped in the hallway, leaning against the wall to watch them.

The boy was probably seventeen, might have been eighteen, with scruffy blonde hair and a lanky frame. The girl in the bed looked younger than him but not by much. Her auburn hair fanned out against the white pillow, the contrast vivid and I could just make out the bright red lashes that brushed against her pale skin at her cheeks. She was pretty, pale, thin, very sick by the look of her, but still pretty. And the boy watching over her loved her. It was in the deep line of worry that rested between his eyebrows and the large bags under his eyes. That worry showed itself in the puffiness of his upper lids and shake of his fingers when he touched her. He was scared. He was lost and I remembered exactly how that felt.

Thirteen years ago, in this hospital, I sat next to Iris’s bed, worried, watching, thinking I might lose my best friend.

“Pneumonia,” I’d heard the principal, Mr. Mellings, tell Mrs. Rogers outside my fifth period Civics class. “Poor Iris is in the hospital, and her mother is beside herself. They’re not sure how long she’ll be there.”

The man had barely gotten the explanation out of his mouth before I ditched the rest of fifth period and walked the two miles to the hospital. It had been snowing then too, but it was Valentine’s Day, not Christmas, and the decorations were all pink hearts and balloons.

Iris had looked nearly as thin and pale as the girl in the room I stood just outside of, but her skin was naturally darker and her thick, dark hair had been in a long braid and fell to her elbow on the mattress.

“Can you hear me?” I’d whispered, my voice cracking because I’d never seen her that silent or that still. “Florecita?”

But Iris hadn’t answered. She lay there still as the grave, and something wild and desperate took hold of my chest clamping like a vice around my heart. No one had ever meant more to me. No one had ever believed in me like Iris had. And in that hospital room, with the IV dripping fluids into her veins and the heart monitor dinging a steady beep telling me she was still with me, fear took hold.

It had a tight grip and didn’t relent its hold of me, sometimes I thought it still had hold of me, but back then, on that cold Valentine’s Day, I understood where that fear came from.

“Iris?”

There was nothing for me to do but lean next to her, just like the boy worrying over his girl. I stroked Iris’s face, frowning when I felt the heat from her fevered skin.

“I hope you can hear me. I hope this reaches you.”

Then I kept my voice low and held her hot cheek in my palm, singing to her, something obscure, but full of meaning even I didn’t understand. Hawthorne, of course.

It was a moment I’d never forget: Iris’s skin under my touch and that swell of fear that kept me focused, that made me understand what this meant. What she did.

There was no one in that room but me and my florecita. We existed for that moment in our own space—; a universe of our own, where no one else could touch us.

“Mami, I need you.” I’d held my breath, scared of everything falling apart if I breathed too loud or moved too much. And then, with my eyes burning, blurring, I leaned in and kissed Iris Daine right on the mouth. Because I loved her. Right then I knew, I loved only her.

“Jamie?”

For a second, I’d thought she woke, like some loco fairytale, that my kiss had brought her from the fever and illness that kept her still, but I sat up, hurrying to wipe my eyes and Mrs. Daine walked into the room, looking worn and exhausted.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately, though I wasn’t. “I just… ay Dios mío …I…”

I moved from the bed, holding up my hands to show Iris’s mother that I was only kissing her, that I wasn’t some pervert.

“I know,” she promised, touching my face to dry my wet cheeks. “I know you worry about her. It’s okay.”

I’d never said more than ten words to Iris’ mother since I’d met her and I’d never seen her look so tired, so weak. Iris loved her mother something fierce. They were close, and sometimes I thought I had to work hard just to keep up with them. Strong women were something I had to get used to, but once I did I’d discovered I’d liked them a lot. But Mrs. Daine looked between me and Iris on the bed, and I thought, for the first time, that she seemed so small and the fear that had crept up inside me the second I’d walked into that room, transformed into something fierce and uncontrollable.

“How can I help?”

She looked at me, easing next to Iris on the bed, but tilted her head, eyes squinting as she watched me. “What?”

“You hungry? Or thirsty? There’s supposed to be a freeze tonight. Did you drain your outside faucet lines and cover the nozzles?”

A small grin twitched her bottom lip before Mrs. Daine nodded. “We’re good on fire wood and the pipes are fine, but I haven’t eaten since last night.”

“Burger? From the cafeteria?” She nodded, that grin stretching into a wide smile. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

I was nearly to the door when Mrs. Daine called me, brought my glance around to her as she watched me. “You know, she needs you too.” It was a brief shift in the attitude Iris’ mother usually had for me. She’d never quite warmed up to me or been very open, but the look she gave me then was enough to thaw the coldness I’d always felt from her. I’d take the small victories when they came.

I’d spent the next half-hour feeding the woman and listening as the doctors updated her on Iris’ prognosis, which had started to improve. Three hours after I’d ditched school to check on Iris, I’d left the hospital, bundling up tight in my thin denim jacket as I headed toward the bus stop. I’d felt good, hopeful that she’d get better, sure that I’d dented a bit of the wall Mrs. Daine kept around herself and I knew that I’d have my friend back soon.

I also knew that I loved her. I knew then that nothing could change how I felt about her and then, just ten feet from the hospital entrance, the loud boom of my mother’s ’78 Pinto backfired, breaking the quiet of the cold night as she slammed on her brakes in front of the hospital.

“Ay, you little shit!” she’d shouted, jumping from the driver’s side of the car, her lips trembling as she stood to glare at me. She wore only a thin sweater, threadbare around the hem and at the elbows, and a pair of knee high black boots over her faded jeans. “Get in this car right now!”

There were two old men smoking near the bus stop, and a girl I recognized from gym was waiting next to the largest man. They all stopped in mid-conversation at my mother’s loud screech and pretended not to notice me as I jogged toward the Pinto, ignoring the death glare my mother gave me.

Her fussing didn’t end when I got into the car, and as we drove away from the hospital, the insults got meaner, and her voice more piercing. “Skipping school…estupido! I swear, te voy a dar una galleta!

“Mama, stop!” I tried, raising an arm to deflect her slap. “I had to check on her. She’s sick.”

“Oh, I know. That gringo teacher told me where you went. Ay bendito, you idiota, how many times do I have to tell you? Leave that chica alone. She’s not for you.”

“What do you know?”

My mother slowed the car to the curb just in front of our house and I curled my fingers around the doorknob, eager to get away from her. She jerked on my elbow, pointing a finger in my face.

“I know she’s smart. Si? I know she’s too smart for this town or for you.” Her features softened then, as though she actually cared. As though everything that left her mouth wasn’t a verbal gut punch. “She will outgrow you and leave you behind. People like that, mijo, they don’t stay with us. They leave. They always leave.”

“You’re wrong, mama. Iris loves me and I…she’s all I have. ”

“Then you don’t have anything.”

I’d left the car, ignoring her as she called after me. It didn’t matter what she thought of me or how I felt. Those predictions hadn’t mattered, but as I pushed off the wall and stared at the end of the hallway, gaze sharp as I glanced at the precise embossed letters on room 214’s door, I realized one of my mother’s promises had come true. Iris had left me behind, but I’d pushed her to do it.

I stared at that door for another full minute before I turned away from it, leaving down the hallway and away from the woman who’d cursed me all those years ago.