Chapter 163 Hospital

• Riley's POV
• Room 412 smelled like all hospital rooms smell — the particular antiseptic smell in the air. I stood in the doorway for a moment before he saw me. He was smaller than I remembered.
• My father had always been a presence — not large the way Brett was large, not commanding, but solid, filling a room with the steady quietness of a man who believed in order and Sunday dinner and keeping his voice low and his collar pressed. The man in the bed with the monitor cable taped to his forearm and the pale blue hospital gown was smaller than that man. Illness did it to people — compressed them somehow. He turned his head and saw me.