“Good. Bring any medications and his ID if you can.”
I move automatically, gathering things with the numb efficiency that kicks in when your nervous system decides shock is easier to survive than emotion. By the time I reach the front door again, they are already loading Dad into the ambulance, the interior a bright, clinical rectangle of light against the dark street.
Aaron’s coworker looks up as I approach. “We’ll take care of him.”
I nod again, because words feel like a luxury I can’t currently access.
The doors close, the sirens rise, and everything I thought was solid shifts into a new, terrifying shape.
The ambulance pulls away, its lights already strobing against the dark, and I follow in my car, my coat half-buttoned incorrectly and the wrong shoes on my feet, the left one rubbinghard against the cuts on my soles with every press of the pedal. I register the discomfort distantly, as if it belongs to someone else.
It is two forty-seven in the morning.
By the time I reach the hospital, the world has narrowed to fluorescent light and antiseptic air. I give my name and sign forms I do not read. I follow a nurse whose shoes squeak against the linoleum in a rhythm that becomes the only steady thing I can hold onto.
Then I’m in a room.
And there is my father.
And the machines.
There are somanyfucking machines.
I stand in the doorway for longer than I should, registering everything around me. The monitor with its steady green line, the IV line taped to the back of his hand, his chest rising and falling, like breathing has become something he has to think about. His face in profile is the face I have been memorizing for nineteen years—a strong jaw, deep-set eyes, and the creases around his mouth from a lifetime of weathering things without complaint.
He looks smaller here than he does at home.
That is the part I am not prepared for.
I cross the room and sit in the chair beside the bed.
The nurses explain things.
‘Cardiac stress event…’
‘Elevated markers…’
‘Monitoring overnight…’
The language is careful and measured, designed to convey information without inducing panic. I absorb it, nod, and ask the appropriate follow-up questions, thank them, then they leave, and it is just the two of us…
And the damn fucking machines.
I stare at my phone for a full second before unlocking it, because there is a part of me that understands what making this call means and wants to delay the reality of it by even the smallest margin.
Then I press Sin’s name.
The line rings once…
Twice.
He answers on the second. “Millie?” Sin doesn’t sound surprised. He never sounds surprised at this hour, which tells me he was already awake, moving somewhere across the city, the club turning over the night like a machine that doesn’t recognize sleep as a necessary function.
My throat tightens unexpectedly.
“We’re at St. Mary’s,” I say. My voice comes out steady, which feels like a small miracle. “Dad… he’s had some kind of episode. I found him on the kitchen floor. They’ve got him in the ER now.”
There is a pause on the other end. It’s not long, just long enough to register that he’s shifting fully into this.
