The waiting room smelled like disinfectant and old fear.
Maya sat in a plastic chair, hands folded so tightly in her lap her knuckles ached.
Her mother sat beside her, reading a magazine article about heart-healthy diets like it was an instruction manual and not a flimsy attempt at distraction.
Down the hall, a nurse called a name. Someone stood. Someone’s life tilted.
“Babygirl,” her mother said softly without looking up. “You’re vibrating.”
“I’m fine,” Maya lied.
“You’re not,” her mother said. “That’s okay. I’m enough of a mess for both of us. You’re allowed to be scared.”
“I’m allowed,” Maya said tightly. “I just don’t have time.”
Her mother lowered the magazine and turned too-wise brown eyes on her.
“You make time,” she said. “For this. For me.”
“I am here,” Maya pointed out.
“Your body is here,” her mother said. “Your brain is half in that glass tower up in L.A. and half in next week’s worst-case scenario.”
“Rude,” Maya muttered. “And accurate.”
Her mother smiled, then sobered.
“How is it?” she asked. “The job.”
Maya exhaled. “Big.”
“Too big?” her mother probed.
“Some days,” Maya said. “Other days it feels…right-sized. Like I was built for juggling sharp objects.”
Her mother’s gaze sharpened. “And him?”
“Him who?” Maya said, stalling.
Her mother gave her The Look. The one that had once cut through teenage sulks and late-night lies.
“The boss,” her mother said. “The one who doesn’t sleep and makes grown men cry in meetings.”
“Wow, word travels fast,” Maya said. “Has he started doing TikToks without telling me?”
“I’m your mother,” she said. “I can read between your lines.”
Maya stared at her hands.
“He’s…” She searched for a word that wasn’t *everything.* “Changing.”
“For you?” her mother asked.
“With me,” Maya said. “Because of me—maybe a little. But also because he’s not an idiot. He knows he can’t work like this forever.”
Her mother hummed. “And you’re not in love with him,” she said, like they both didn’t know better.
“No,” Maya said automatically. “Absolutely not.”
Her mother arched a brow.
Maya’s throat worked.
“I can’t…afford to be,” she admitted, voice barely above a whisper. “Not like this. Not yet.”
Her mother’s expression softened.
“I wish I could have given you a world where love wasn’t something you had to budget for,” she said quietly.
Emotion rose hot and sharp.
“You gave me everything else,” Maya said. “Guilt is extra.”
Her mother chuckled. “You get that from me too.”
A nurse in navy scrubs appeared at the door. “Ms. Brooks?” she called.
Both of them stood.
“Oh,” the nurse said, flustered. “Um…Patricia Brooks?”
“That’s me,” her mother said. “This is my daughter, Maya. She’s my…brain.”
“I’m her Google,” Maya translated. “And her occasional bouncer.”
The nurse smiled faintly. “Dr. Chen is ready for you.”
They followed her down the hall.
The exam room was brightly lit, the kind of clinical white that made everything look harsher.
Dr. Chen was a brisk woman in her fifties with kind eyes and a stack of printed scans.
“Ms. Brooks,” she said, shaking Patricia’s hand. “And you must be Maya. I’ve heard about you.”
“Only the good things?” Maya said.
“Mostly,” Dr. Chen said. “Shall we?”
She pulled up the latest MRI on the screen.
There it was.
A faint, irregular blur in the gray of her mother’s brain.
“Is that…new?” Maya asked, pulse thudding.
“Yes,” Dr. Chen said. “Compared to last year’s imaging. It’s small. But it wasn’t there before.”
“Tumor,” Patricia said bluntly.
“Possibly,” Dr. Chen said. “It could also be an area of gliosis. Scar tissue. The only way to know for certain is a biopsy.”
“Brain surgery,” Maya said, stomach flipping.
“A minimally invasive procedure,” Dr. Chen said. “We go in, sample the tissue, run pathology. It’s not without risk, but given the location and your mother’s overall health, she’s a good candidate.”
“And if it’s…bad?” Patricia asked, matter-of-fact.
“If it’s malignant, we’ll stage it,” Dr. Chen said. “There are treatment options. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Clinical trials. This is not the seventies. We know more now.”
“And if it’s nothing?” Maya asked. “If it’s just…scar?”
“Then we watch,” Dr. Chen said. “Closely. Every six months. Maybe more.”
Patricia absorbed this with unnerving calm.
Maya wanted to scream.
“What would *you* do?” she asked Dr. Chen, voice shaking. “If this were your mother.”
Dr. Chen paused. Then, “I would biopsy.”
“Soon?” Patricia asked.
“Within the month,” Dr. Chen said. “We don’t need to rush you into surgery this week. But I don’t want to sit on it for half a year either.”
Patricia nodded. “Okay.”
“That’s it?” Maya burst out. “Just…okay?”
Her mother gave her The Look again.
“You heard the lady,” Patricia said. “We need more information. I’ve never been a fan of guessing games.”
“This isn’t a game,” Maya snapped, then immediately regretted the heat in her tone.
“I know, baby,” her mother said gently. “Which is why we do the scary thing now instead of the scarier thing later.”
Tears threatened. Maya blinked hard.
“Risks,” she said to Dr. Chen. “Lay them out. All of them.”
They went through the list.
Bleeding. Infection. Stroke. Cognitive changes.
The numbers. The percentages. The institutional experience.
Maya asked questions. Took notes. Argued details.
Her mother listened, then said, “Okay,” again.
By the time they left, a tentative surgery date had been set. Two and a half weeks.
Long enough to plan. Short enough to not marinate in terror forever.
In the parking lot, Maya leaned against the car and stared at the asphalt.
Her mother unlocked the driver’s door. “You want to sit a minute?” she asked.
“I want to dismantle the medical-industrial complex,” Maya said. “But yes. Sitting is good.”
Patricia came around and stood in front of her, hands on Maya’s shoulders.
“You can go back to work, you know,” she said. “You don’t have to stay the whole time. I have friends. Church ladies. Your Aunt Felicia.”
Maya snorted. “Aunt Felicia thinks yoga is the devil. I’m not leaving you to her tender mercies.”
“I’ll be fine,” her mother said. “This isn’t your job.”
“Being your daughter is my job,” Maya said. “The rest is…a contract.”
Her mother’s eyes shone. “You’re too good for this world,” she said.
“No,” Maya said. “I’m exactly good enough for you. Everyone else can manage.”
Her mother pulled her into a hug.
For a moment, Maya let herself be small. Be the child. Bury her face in the familiar curve of her mother’s shoulder and breathe in the smell of laundry detergent and peppermint lotion.
Then she straightened.
“Okay,” she said, swiping under her eyes. “Game plan.”
“You’re your father’s child,” Patricia muttered fondly.
“Yeah, well, he left the spreadsheets, you kept the spine,” Maya said.
They worked it out.
Who would be at the hospital on surgery day. Who would bring food. Who would feed the cat.
Maya promised to come back the weekend before. To stay as long as she could afterward.
Then, with a kiss on her mother’s cheek and a promise to call that night, she got in her car and drove back toward Los Angeles.
Her phone buzzed twice on the freeway.
Once a text from Kai: *Alive?*
Once an email notification from Marcus’s personal address.
She didn’t read either until she pulled into a rest stop and parked.
First, Kai.
Maya: *Biopsy. Two weeks. Could be nothing, could be…something. Functioning on coffee and denial.*
Kai: *Fuck. I’m so sorry. I’m here. Whatever you need. I have snacks and rage.*
A watery smile tugged at Maya’s mouth.
Then, Marcus.
> From: Marcus Kane > To: Maya Brooks > Subject: Today > > Don’t answer this until you’re somewhere safe. > > When you have a moment, let me know: > \- Date and time of the procedure > \- Hospital > \- The name of her primary and the neurosurgeon > > I’m not asking to insert myself. I am asking because if there is anything I can do to make this marginally less awful (second opinions, expedited imaging, getting someone to return a call at 2 a.m.), I’m going to do it. > > This is not a request. It’s me showing up the only way I know how. > > – M
She stared at the screen.
He’d written *M* instead of his full name.
Something about that—it being him, not the CEO—made her throat ache.
She typed back.
> Hospital: St. Augustine. > Neurosurgeon: Dr. Chen. You'd like her. Efficient. Human. > Date: April 14. 7 a.m. call time because doctors are sadists. > > You don’t have to— > > Actually, no. > > Thank you. > > – M
She hit send before she could over-edit.
The reply came six minutes later.
> Noted. > > I’ll clear my calendar for that day and the two after. I won’t be at the hospital, but I’ll be a call away. For you, not for them. > > Don’t argue. > > – M
Tears spilled again, hot and sudden.
She laughed through them.
Of course he’d attach *don’t argue* to an act of care.
Control issues to the end.
She wiped her face, took a deep breath, and pulled back onto the freeway.
If showing up was a skill, she thought, he was learning it.
Slowly. Awkwardly.
And damn if she wasn’t doing the same.
***
Back on sixty-two the next morning, the world was resolutely, offensively normal.
Emails. Meetings. A printer jam. A typo in a press release Jenna nearly stabbed someone over.
Marcus was on a video call when Maya arrived, sleeves rolled, tie already off, talking about risk premiums like he hadn’t just cleared three days of CEO time for a woman he’d never met.
She slid into her chair, dropped her bag, and opened her laptop.
He glanced up.
Their eyes met.
He didn’t mouth *you okay?*
She didn’t nod *yes*.
They were past that now.
He finished his call, closed his laptop, and walked out.
“Morning,” he said.
“Morning,” she said.
“Any fires?” he asked.
“Operations in Tacoma are having a minor meltdown about crane maintenance,” she said. “Legal wants to talk about the new OSHA guidelines. Jenna wants to know if you’re willing to do a podcast about ethical supply chains.”
“No,” he said to the last one. “Maybe to the second. Absolutely to the first.”
She jotted notes. “You have a one-on-one with Oliver at nine, a port authority call at eleven, and lunch with the new Arcturus liaison at one.”
He nodded briskly.
Just before he turned back toward his office, he said, in that offhand way he used when something mattered more than he wanted to show, “I spoke to someone at St. Augustine this morning.”
Her heart jumped. “You what?”
“An old…acquaintance,” he said. “She’s on the board. I asked her about Chen. About the neurosurgery team. Their ICU load. Their complication rates.”
“And?” she asked, pulse pounding.
“Chen is good,” he said simply. “So is her team. If my mother had this problem, I’d be comfortable with her.”
Emotion swelled too fast.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she whispered.
“I know,” he said. “I wanted to.”
“That’s…not your job,” she said weakly.
“It is if I say it is,” he said. “And you promised not to argue.”
“That was about the calendar, not the hospital trustees,” she said, laughing shakily.
“Fine print,” he said.
Her eyes burned.
“Thank you,” she said, the words inadequate and huge.
He inclined his head.
“Let’s go terrorize Tacoma,” he said.
She grabbed her tablet and followed.
Showing up, she thought, came in many shapes.
Sitting on ugly carpet in a hallway.
Clearing three days on a calendar.
Calling a hospital board member before most people had their first coffee.
None of it fixed the shadow in her mother’s brain.
But it shifted the weight of it.
Made it less like a boulder she was holding alone and more like something shared.
And that, in a life built on crises and calculations, felt dangerously close to hope.
***