Then I place my hand in hers and intertwine our fingers.
The ICU is quiet. Quiet in a way that crawls under your skin and dares you to breathe too loudly. Everything’s hushed. Voices sound clipped. Shoes squeak softly against polished floors. Machines hum and beep behind glass walls as nurses move with practiced care, speaking in whispers as if sound itself might break something.
We pass room after room, each one similar yet different. People suspended in that awful space between here and somewhere else. I keep my hand locked around hers, my thumb gently rubbing slow circles across her knuckles like muscle memory knows what to do even if my head doesn’t.
Room two-seventeen is at the end of the hall.
Lola’s steps slow as we get closer. Her grip tightens until it almost hurts.
When we get to the door, she comes to a sudden stop. Her breath catches.
I follow her gaze.
Through the glass, I see him. Her dad.
The big guy with the laugh that carries. The one who shows up to every school event with a smile. The man who cooks as if food is love and makes space for everyone around him.
Now he’s lying flat on a hospital bed.
Machines surround him. Tubes run into his arms. Wires cling to his head. His chest rises and falls only because a ventilator controls it. His face is pale and unfamiliar, as if someone turned the volume down on him and forgot to turn it back up.
“Oh my god,” Lola says, before a sob escapes from her chest.
A doctor exits the room, clipboard in hand, with a calm face in that practiced way that makes my skin crawl. People in coats always appear like this. Steady. Neutral. As if they’re trained not to feel the weight of what they’re about to say.
“Lola,” he says softly. “You’re Pete’s daughter?”
She nods.
“I’m Dr. Reeve,” he says. “Your father collapsed at a job site. One of the other workers found him unconscious. He was brought in quickly, which helps. But he’s had a severe stroke.”
Lola sways, just a fraction, and I step closer without thinking, my arm coming around her back, solid and sure. She leans into me.
“What does that mean?” she asks, voice trembling. “Is he… Is he…”
Alive. Say he’s fucking alive.
“He’s stable right now,” the doctor says. “He’s in a medically induced coma to reduce swelling. We’re monitoring him closely.”
Lola’s breath breaks.
“We won’t know the full extent of the damage yet,” the Doctor continues. “The next forty-eight hours are critical.”
Critical. Another fucking word I hate.
Lola nods again, tears falling freely now. “Can I see him?”
“Yes,” the doctor says. “But just for a few minutes.”
He moves aside to allow her to walk into the room.
She hesitates for just a moment, as if she’s afraid that once she walks through that door, everything will become real in a way she can’t undo. I squeeze her hand.
“I’m right here,” I murmur. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She looks up at me and nods before stepping into the room and moving to the side of the bed. Her fingers tremble as she reaches for her dad’s hand. She speaks to him in a soft rush of words I can’t hear, forehead pressed to his knuckles, tears falling onto the sheets.
The world has finally managed to break her and take all that sunshine she carries.
