Kurt was in the back counting the cash drawer. There were three cars behind Joanne’s Corolla, honking. I didn’t care.

“Where?” I said. “Where have you seen him?”

Joanne stared at the photo. Snow was landing on her scrubs and in her hair.

“Two years ago,” she said slowly. “Almost two and a half. In the ICU. A woman came in with sepsis from a kidney infection that went bad. She was forty-one, a single mom. She worked at the Walmart on Stillwater Avenue, and she’d put off going to the doctor because she didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford it. By the time she came in, it was too late.” Joanne’s voice was shaking. “She was in my unit for nine days.”

“And the boy?”

“Her son. Fifteen. He sat in the family waiting room every single day for nine days. All day, every day. He slept in the chairs at night. Nobody came with him. No dad. The grandmother was sick herself and couldn’t drive.” She pressed her fingers against her lips. “He never cried. Not once that I saw. He just sat there in the same gray hoodie, doing his homework, waiting for somebody to tell him his mom was going to be okay.”

Behind her, the minivan with the twins laid on the horn.

Joanne didn’t even hear it.

“I brought him a hot chocolate,” she said. “From the vending machine on the second floor. The first night, because he looked so cold. A dollar twenty-five.” She laughed, and it came out as a sob. “Then I did it every morning when I came on shift. All nine mornings. It was the only thing I could think of to do for him. I’d hand it to him and say, ‘Drink this, honey, you need something warm.’”

She looked at me with tears running down her face.

“His mother died on the ninth night. I was holding her hand. He was in the waiting room. I had to go out and tell him.”

I couldn’t speak.

“Small hot chocolate,” Joanne whispered. “He always orders a small hot chocolate, doesn’t he?”

“Every single morning,” I said.

Joanne Pelletier sat in her car at my drive-thru window in the snow and cried like her heart was breaking. I reached through the window and held her hand. The minivan with the twins finally backed up and pulled around to the exit without their whipped cream.

Kurt came up behind me with the cash drawer.

“Ro, what is going on? We’ve got cars backed up to the road!”

“Kurt,” I said, without turning around, “take the window.”

“What?”

“Take the window. I’m going to the hospital.”