Miguel is there, but not like a person sleeping after a long shift. He is too still. Too thin. Too sunken into the mattress. His face has lost all its color. His lips are cracked white at the edges. A blanket is pulled over him, but only halfway, and one arm rests outside it, limp and frighteningly light-looking, like the arm of a boy who has grown too fast and then stopped eating long before his bones finished believing in him.
You make a sound you have never heard come out of yourself.
Something between his name and a cry.
“Miguel!”
You stumble to the bed and fall to your knees beside it. Your hands go straight to his face, his shoulders, his neck, checking for warmth, for movement, for anything. His skin is cool, but not dead-cold. When you shake him, gently at first and then harder, his eyelids flutter.
That almost kills you.
He is alive.
Alive, but barely.
His mouth moves before the rest of him does. A dry whisper leaks out.
“Mom?”
