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My mind kept trying to fill in the blanks—kept trying to make sense of it.

Maybe she fell.

Maybe she had a bad reaction to our cooking.

Or maybe there was a complication with… something.

Whatever it was, it had to be treatable. It had to be temporary. Whatever it was, it had to end with her pissed off about hospital food and us hovering too much.

Anything but the possibility of this was it clawing at the back of my mind.

My grip on the steering wheel tightened as I forced myself to breathe. Somehow, even basic life functions felt too hard as worry and panic took over.

She’d been fine hours ago. A little tired and fragile, but fine otherwise.

At least, she had been until I fucked everything up. What if the stress had been too much? What if this was my fault? What if I’d pushed her past her limit with everything? I knew that wasn’t how cancer worked, but that didn’t stop my fear and guilt from latching onto that possibility.

The tires squealed as I turned too fast into the parking lot. I barely registered the painted lines or the cars around me. I just followed the signs toward the emergency entrance, my heart pounding so hard it felt like I couldn’t pull in a full breath.

As I rounded the final curve, I saw Jude. He sat on one of the benches beneath the emergency entrance awning, his elbows on his knees. His face was buried in his hands as his shoulders shook. Even from across the parking lot, I could tell he was crying.

My heart dropped right out of my chest. Whatever fragile hope I’d been clinging to on the drive over disappeared.

I pulled into the closest spot I could find and threw the car into park, not giving a shit if I was remotely parked within the lines. The engine had barely shut off when I rushed out of the car.

“Jude!” I called out, and his head snapped up. The moment I saw his face threatened to break me. He looked devastated. Not scared. Not worried. Devastated. His eyes were swollen and red, with tears streaking down his cheeks as he pushed shakily to his feet. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

And I knew.

Some awful, instinctive part of me just knew.

“No.” I shook my head before he could say anything. “Where’s Mom?”

“Rhodes,” Jude began, his voice breaking.

“No,” I repeated louder as I crossed the distance between us so fast I nearly stumbled. “What the fuck happened, Jude?”

“They were fighting,” he managed to say, his words breaking with each sob. “Dad and Mom… after you left… they just kept fighting, and she was so mad, Rhodes. She wouldn’t stop yelling at him, and I tried to get her to sit down because she was so worked up, but she wouldn’t listen, and then she just… she just… she just collapsed.”

“What?” My stomach dropped.

“She just collapsed.” Jude dragged both his hands over his face, crying harder. “She was standing there, and then she wasn’t. I caught her—I think I caught her. I don’t even know anymore. Dad called nine-one-one, and they came, and they were doing all of this stuff before taking her here, and I didn’t know what to do, so I called you, and when they got here they said… they said…”

The rest of the words were lost in the sob, but I didn’t need to hear him say it. I knew. She was gone.

Mom was just… gone.

Just hours ago she’d been there… and now she just… wasn’t.

“No,” I whispered. It was useless—childish. There was no arguing with this. There was no mistake to correct. There was no fixing this. And yet, the word kept coming anyway. “No. No, she was fine. She was fine!”

Jude made another wet sound, and something inside me finally broke because she hadn’t been fine. She’d been sick. She’d been exhausted. She’d stopped treatment because she wanted whatever time she had left to feel like living.

And I’d taken one of those days and filled it with screaming. With stress. With my father putting his hands on me. With Mom fighting a battle she never should’ve had to fight.

My mind started building the timeline before I could stop it: dinner, Dad’s comments, me snapping, coming out, the fight, me leaving, Mom and Dad arguing, Mom collapsing.

Over and over, I ran through the timeline, looking for something other than the very logical conclusion my grief-stricken brain was willing to accept: this was my fault.