“Okay,” the nurse says gently.
I can hear hospital noise in the background. Machines beeping. Voices moving somewhere down a hall.
“Could you please let Lola know her father has woken up.”
“Sorry,” I say. “What?”
“He’s awake,” the nurse repeats calmly. “Her father regained consciousness about thirty minutes ago. We’ve been slowly reducing the sedation over the last few days and he’s responding well.”
I blink.
Across the room, Bells is staring at me more intently now. Her breathing is shallow. She knows something is happening; she just doesn’t know whether it’s good or bad news. If this is the call that destroys her or saves her.
“Okay,” I manage. “I’ll let her know.”
“And please tell Lola that even though it’s outside visiting hours, she’s more than welcome to come in tonight if she’d like to see her father.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “She’ll want that.”
“Good. We’ll be here.”
The line clicks and goes dead.
I lower the phone and look over at Bells, who hasn’t moved an inch. She looks at me with those terrified eyes, as she steps forward. Her entire body trembles now.
“What did they say?” Her voice breaks on the words.
“Your dad’s awake,” I tell her, and for a second, she just stares at me. Then her face crumples as relief floods through her so intensely that her knees buckle.
I cross the room quickly and catch her before she hits the floor. I wrap my arms around her and hold her up.
“He’s awake,” I say again, my mouth near her ear. “He woke up about thirty minutes ago. The nurse said he’s responding well.”
A sound escapes from her throat as her hands grip me so tightly.
“He is okay?” she whispers.
“Yeah.” I hold her tighter. “He’s okay.”
She completely collapses in my arms. Her whole body trembles with sobs that tear through her. Tears soak into my chest. Her breath comes in ragged gasps.
I hold her through it. Let her break down and cry until there’s nothing left. And while I’m standing here holding her, as she’s breaking apart with relief, I’m happy that he is awake. The man she has been sitting beside for days, waiting for any sign hemight come back to her, waiting for some proof that she’s not about to lose the only family she has left.
But right after that relief, another thought sneaks in. It slips in quietly, ugly, and unwanted. What if she no longer needs me?
The thought settles in my chest and stays there. Heavy, dark, and fucking terrifying. Because the only reason she crawled into my bed in the middle of the night was that her world was falling apart. She was breaking and needed someone to hold the pieces together. I was there, I was willing, and I could give her something that made the pain stop for a while.
The thought makes something in my chest crack open in a way I’m not ready for. I push it down and bury it deep where she can’t see it.
Eventually, she pulls back just enough to look up at me. Her face is streaked with tears and her eyes are red and swollen.
“They said you can go in and see him,” I tell her.
She nods looking up at me.
“I need to get dressed,” she says, pulling away from me completely.
Lola looks around the floor for her clothes that are scattered everywhere. I watch her bend down and grab her jeans near the foot of the bed. She steps into them and pulls them up over her hips. Her hands fumble with the button. She’s moving too fast. Too frantic. She finds her bra next, then her shirt crumpled on the floor by the doorway where I pulled it off her.
