His grip is weak. Not absent. But wrong.
My eyes snap to his face.
One side of his mouth isn’t moving the way it should. It’s subtle—too subtle for someone who hasn’t stared at him for years. But I have. I know every line of that man’s face.
And right now, it looks like his body is betraying him in real time.
“Sloane!” I shout. “Sloane! Cameron!”
Bare feet slap against the floor seconds later. She skids into the doorway, hair wild, panic already carved across her face. She drops to the floor beside us, hands moving fast—his cheek, his wrist, his forehead.
“Dad?” Her voice cracks instantly. “Dad, look at me. Look at me.”
He tries.
But his gaze drifts past her like he can’t lock on.
Sloane’s eyes flick to me, frantic. “What is?—”
“Stroke,” I say, the word tasting like metal. Like a curse. “I think it’s a stroke.”
Her breath catches, sharp and wet.
“No,” she whispers, like refusing the word can undo it.
“Sloane, call 9-1-1. Now.” I keep my hand on Pops’s shoulder, anchoring him, anchoring myself. I yell back toward the hall again, “Cameron!”
“He left when we got back. We—we need to call him.” Her hands shake as she fumbles her phone. The moment she hits speaker, her voice snaps into place—too steady, too practiced for someone who’s falling apart.
“Hi—my dad collapsed. He—he’s slurring his words, and his face looks wrong, and he can’t lift his arm. We’re at—” She rattles off the address, voice wobbling on the last numbers.
I look back at Pops.
“Hey,” I say, close to his ear. “Stay with me. You hear me?”
He blinks slowly.
His good hand twitches toward me like he’s trying.
Sloane’s voice goes distant as she answers questions: when did it start, is he awake, is he breathing, what time did you last see him normal?—
I glance back at the clock like it’s going to hold the line for us.
“One seventeen,” I say, loud enough for her to hear. “It was one seventeen.”
Sloane repeats it, voice cracking. “One seventeen. That’s when we heard him fall.”
Pops makes a sound—half exhale, half laugh that doesn’t work.
“Hell of a time,” he mumbles, and the attempt at humor is what nearly shatters me, because it’s him trying to keep us calm even while his body is doing this.
“Don’t talk,” I tell him, too harsh, then soften immediately. “Just breathe.”
The paramedics arrive fast—calm voices, clipped movements, equipment clicking open. They kneel beside Pops, flash a light in his eyes, ask him his name, the year, who the president is?—
Pops tries to answer, and it comes out mangled.
I feel Sloane flinch beside me like she’s been struck.
