“You haven’t had a lick of proper sleep, and you’ve been subsisting on hospital vending machine snacks.”
“I want to be here when news comes. I can’t leave your dad.”
“Mom.”
She stared through the glass at Dad.
“What if something happens?”
“I’ll call you.”
“What if he wakes up?”
“Then I’ll tell him you left right at the end, but you spent every other second worrying next to him.”
She almost smiled.
Finally, she agreed.
After Mom left, I sat beside Dad and held his hand.
His motionless fingers looked wrong.
I talked anyway.
I told him about work.
I told him Mom had threatened a vending machine because it ate her dollar, and I’d never seen her so angry.
I told him he still owed me dinner.
Then the door opened.
A woman stepped inside.
She looked around fifty, with dark hair streaked with gray and red, exhausted eyes.
She wasn’t carrying flowers.
She barely seemed to notice me.
She walked straight to Dad and placed one hand over his chest.
“Please hold on, Arthur.”
I stood.
“My father’s name is David.”
The woman froze.
Slowly, she turned toward me.
For a long second, neither of us spoke.
Then she whispered, “You’re his daughter.”
“Who are you?”
She swallowed.
“Mara.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I told the front desk I was family.”
“Why?”
Her expression shifted.
The grief remained, but something harder appeared beneath it.
Then she looked down at Dad, and her face filled with sorrow and uncertainty.
“I wasn’t sure I should come.”
“Why did you call him Arthur?”
“It’s his middle name.”
I knew that.
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