My granddaughter called me from the hospital at 3:17 in the morning, and before I even reached the ER, I already knew this was the night everything in our family would finally come into the open.

I was at the closet by then, pulling on dark slacks and the first clean blouse my hand found.

“Which hospital?”

“St. Augustine. Emergency.”

“I’m leaving now. Do not say anything else to anyone until I get there. Not the doctor, not your mother, not him. Can you do that?”

“Yes.”

“Are you alone right now?”

“I’m in a room. He’s in the waiting area. Mom’s with him.”

“Good. Stay where you are. I’m on my way.”

She exhaled once, shakily, and I heard the smallest break in the composure she had been forcing onto her own voice.

“Okay.”

Then she hung up, and I stood in the dark for one second with the phone in my hand and the old part of me—the part built in operating rooms and reanimated at odd hours—settled cleanly into place.

I dressed in four minutes. Not because I was rushing. Rushing is imprecise. I was efficient. There is a difference. Beige leather jacket from the hook by the bedroom door. Wallet. Glasses. Keys in the right pocket because that is where keys belong in an emergency. Hair pinned back. No jewelry except my watch. I was in the car before 3:22.

Charleston at that hour is a different city from the one tourists think they know. No carriage wheels, no restaurant lights, no soft-voiced couples wandering cobblestones under the illusion that old cities are romantic because their bricks are worn. At 3:22 the city belongs to utility workers, nurses on night shift, delivery trucks, ambulance sirens, and the occasional insomniac dog walker in expensive fleece who steps back when headlights round the corner too fast. The roads were nearly empty as I drove toward St. Augustine Medical Center, and because I have never been one of those people who mistake panic for urgency, my hands were steady on the wheel.

As I drove, I thought of James Whitaker.