Sometimes Laura didn’t offer advice at all and simply remained on the phone until I felt calm enough to continue. Fifteen years after she first sat beside my hospital bed, graduation morning finally arrived, and she helped steam my dress before carefully taking my first white coat from its hanger.
Over the heart, the embroidery read Dr. Emily Davidson. Laura touched the name gently with two fingers, and neither of us allowed ourselves to cry because we had already agreed that our makeup needed to survive until after the ceremony.
When we arrived at the auditorium, staff directed the graduates toward the front while families were shown to their seats. Before leaving me, Laura squeezed my hand and made the same kind of promise she had spent fifteen years keeping.
“I’ll be right where you can see me.”
I believed her because Laura had never given me a reason not to. What I didn’t know was that Karen, Thomas, and Megan had somehow learned about my graduation and were already sitting in the reserved family section, behaving as though they had been part of everything that brought me there.
At first, I wondered whether I had imagined them. Then I saw Karen proudly pointing me out to another woman, Thomas accepting a graduation program from an usher, and Megan sitting with her phone in her hand, and suddenly my body remembered Room 314 before my mind had fully caught up.
