Two months after the ink dried on our divorce papers, I found myself walking the sterile, fluorescent-lit halls of the Semmelweis Clinic

fear, and nights when hope felt too fragile to touch.

But she would not sit alone in fluorescent hallways anymore.

Not while I had breath in my body.

Later, when a nurse came to take her back to her room, Maya looked at me with tired eyes.

“You don’t have to do this,” she said.

I stood beside her wheelchair and took her hand.

“Maya,” I said softly, “I should continue reading …