She Became Her Own Star

My mother was in the hospital after a nasty dog bite, so I called my fiancé, Cohen. He was supposed to be my rock.

Instead, I got annoyance. He was in Aspen, on a ski trip with my best friend, Hillary. “What do you want me to do? Fly back right now?” he snapped, before hanging up to get back to the “perfect snow.”

The dog, it turned out, was Hillary’s. The bite on my diabetic mother’s leg quickly developed into a raging infection. I texted Cohen an update, telling him she was getting worse, that they were talking about surgery.