“It’s your father.He had a heart attack around four this morning.The nurse tried CPR until the medics arrived, but ...”
There’s a long pause.A hitch that lands in my chest like a punch I don’t see coming.
“They couldn’t bring him back.He’s gone.”
The words float in the air like smoke—thick, impossible to hold.I blink at the wall.They don’t fucking make sense.
My brain won’t let them in.
Not yet.
“He ...he’s dead?”I ask, but I’m not truly asking.It’s just a sound leaving my mouth because I can’t do anything else.My voice is someone else’s—someone far away, composed, and numb.
“I’m sorry,” she says, too soft, too late.
And then everything stills.Not spins.Not breaks.Just stops.
The hum of the world, the warmth of the room, the space between thoughts—gone.
My body forgets itself.No breath.No pulse.No direction.
I sit there, frozen, with the phone still pressed to my ear.Her voice grows smaller, like she’s being sucked into a tunnel I can’t follow.
My father died today.And I ...I’d just told him I hated him.
Told him to rot in hell.That I never wanted to see him again.
And now?—
Now I never will.
My mind claws at the memory, plays it on loop, like a cruel director watching a scene unfold from ten angles.
I don’t want to see you ever again.
“Are you sure?”I ask, because something in me still thinks this is a mistake.That she meant to call someone else.That in a few months, when he recovers, he’ll walk in with his signature scowl, asking why I’m crying like a child.
That this isn’t real.
“Yes.Sorry for your loss,” she says again, as if the words matter.
And, sure, maybe I lost him today.But the truth is, I lost him years ago.
When Mom died—or maybe before that.
It’s hard to find the exact moment.
Everything else blurs—blows out, muffled and shapeless.
The past.The hate.The things we never said.The things we did.
I don’t remember hanging up.I just sit there, staring into the far corner of the room, where the darkness feels like it might swallow me whole.The phone slips from my hand to the floor.I don’t move.I don’t even cry.
Hours pass.Or maybe days.
Eventually, I remember that death demands things.
Calls.Forms.Signatures.
