Chapter Seventeen #2
Dad would hate this version of me. He’d tell me to sit up straight. He’d tell me to drink water. He’d tell me to stop gnawing on the inside of my cheek like I’m trying to chew through my own nerves. He’d crack a joke about how hospitals are basically just expensive waiting rooms with worse snacks.
I swipe my tongue over my teeth and realize I’m doing it again. Pressing. Grinding. Holding tension.
My hands smell faintly like hand sanitizer from the tenth time I’ve used it. My skin is dry, tight.
My thoughts won’t stay on him, and that makes me feel like a monster.
Because every time I force myself to picture Dad, another image slips in—Nico’s hand closing over mine at my desk. The quiet firmness of it. The way it stopped me mid-spiral without him even saying much. The way I snapped at him, anyway, like a cornered animal.
You didn’t pay for it this time.
I said it like I wanted it to hurt him.
I said it because it was hurting me. Because if he’s fine and I’m not, then the only thing I can do is make it ugly. Make it something I can hate instead of something I want. Make it something I can survive.
My stomach turns again, sharper.
I stare at the hospital doors as if I watch hard enough, someone will come out with answers. My throat is sore from swallowing back panic. My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. Not here. Not with strangers watching and their own tragedies stacked in their laps.
I check my phone. No new calls. No voicemails. No texts.
I don’t know who I’m waiting for.
The surgeon. A nurse. A doctor with a calm voice and a clipboard who will tell me “everything went well” like those three words can undo months of terror. Or the other sentence. The sentence I can’t let myself imagine.
My fingers hover over Nico’s contact in my phone.
I don’t touch it.
I can hear his voice in my head anyway, controlled and commanding, like he’s already decided how this should go. Come to me for anything.
My chest tightens so hard I have to breathe through it.
I don’t need him.
I also don’t know how to do this alone.
I look down at my hands, and they’re trembling. Not dramatic. Not shaking like in a movie. Just enough to make the edge of my phone tap lightly against my thumbnail, over and over.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
I squeeze my eyes shut for one second, then open them again because I can’t stand the darkness. I can’t stand not watching the hallway.
A nurse walks by. Not toward me. Past me.
My heart still jumps.
I drag in a breath that doesn’t feel like it goes all the way down.
Please.
I don’t know who I’m talking to when I think that word. The ceiling. The floor. The universe. My mother’s memory. Nobody.
Please.
I swallow hard and stare at the doors until my vision blurs, willing them to open.
Then they do, and a man in a white coat steps into the waiting room with a clipboard in his hand.
My head snaps up so fast my neck aches.
He scans the room, eyes landing on me like he already knows who I am.
“Erica Crawford?” he asks.
My mouth opens. Nothing comes out at first.
I clear my throat. “Yes.”
He walks over, calm, professional, not rushed, and my stomach tries to climb into my throat anyway. I brace for the sentence I’ve been afraid of all day.
“Your father is out of surgery,” he says.
The air leaves my lungs in one ugly rush.
Out.
Out is good.
Out means he made it to the other side of the part where they cut him open and hope they can put him back together again.
“They’ve brought him back to the ICU,” the doctor continues. “He’s stable. You can come in to see him if you want to.”
If I want to.
Like there’s a universe where I don’t.
I stand so fast the chair squeaks, the sound too loud. My legs feel strange under me, like they’re not sure they’re supposed to work now that the waiting is over.
“Yes,” I say, too sharply. Then softer, because my voice cracks. “Yes, I want to.”
He nods and gestures toward the hall. “I’ll take you back.”
I grab my bag without thinking. My hands fumble with the strap. I get it over my shoulder on the second try.
He leads me down a hallway that smells even more like antiseptic. The lights are dimmer back here, softer. The sound is different, too. Less chatter. More beeping.
My heart is in my throat.
We stop at a sink.
“Wash up,” he tells me.
I scrub my hands like I’m trying to erase the last few months off my skin. I dry them on the thin paper towel and follow him to the curtain.
“This is him,” he says quietly.
Then he pulls it back, and the room opens up.
Dad is there.
Daniel Crawford, who has always been larger than life in my head, even when the world tried to make him small, is lying in a hospital bed with tubes and wires attached to him.
His chest rises and falls. Slow. Assisted.
His skin looks waxy under the monitors’ glow. There’s tape on his face. A line in his arm. A line in his neck. The beeping is steady, calm, maddening.
He looks… peaceful.
He looks like someone already took all the fight out of him and left him behind.
My throat closes so hard it hurts.
I step closer like I’m afraid he’ll vanish if I don’t.
The doctor murmurs something about not touching the IV lines, about where I can stand, about keeping my voice low, and then he slips out and tells me he’ll be back in a few minutes to go over the surgery details, leaving me alone with the machines and the man who raised me.
I stand at the side of the bed and just stare for a second, because my brain needs proof. Needs confirmation that he’s real and not a hallucination produced by panic.
His hair is mussed. His face is thinner than it should be. There’s a faint bruise on his hand where they’ve probably poked and prodded him all day.
I reach out carefully and take his fingers.
His hand is warm.
Not fully warm, not the way it should be, but warm enough that my eyes sting instantly.
“Hey,” I whisper.
My voice sounds wrong in this room. Too loud even when it’s not.
“Hey, Dad.”
He doesn’t move, obviously.
I hold his hand anyway, because I need to. Because I don’t know what to do with my hands if they’re not holding onto him.
My thumb rubs over his knuckles in a slow, repetitive motion, like that can smooth the whole world back into place.
Those few minutes pass quickly, and a small knock sounds at the open doorway. The doctor steps back in and stops at the foot of the bed, glancing at the monitors.
“The surgery went well,” he says.
My eyes burn.
“Is it… gone?” I say. “The kidney mass?”
The doctor nods once. “We removed the mass and the surrounding tissue we needed to take,” he says.
“There were no complications during the procedure. His vitals stayed stable throughout.” He glances at the monitor again, then back to me.
“Right now, this is the part where we watch. The next twenty-four hours are important.”
My grip tightens on Dad’s hand. “So… it worked,” I say, hopeful.
“It went the way we wanted it to go,” he answers, carefully. He doesn’t soften it with false certainty, and I hate him a little for that, even though it’s the only honest way.
“We won’t know how well until he’s recovered. Until we see how his body responds. Until we have pathology. But from a surgical standpoint, we did what we came here to do.”
I swallow hard, trying to keep my face from collapsing in front of him. “When will he wake up?” My voice comes out small, and I hate that too.
“Not tonight,” he says. “He’s still under sedation.
He likely won’t be fully awake until morning.
” His tone stays even. Professional. Kind, in a detached way.
“You might as well head home and try to rest. The ICU staff will call you if there are any changes. We don’t expect there to be, but you’ll get updates either way.
” He pauses, watching me. “Do you have someone with you tonight?”
I shake my head once, because if I speak, I’m going to sound like I’m twelve. “No. It’s just me.”
The doctor’s eyes hold mine for a beat, like he wants to argue with that, then he just nods. “Okay,” he says quietly. “If you need anything at all, tell the nurse.” He steps back, pulls the curtain a little wider like he’s giving me space, and then he’s gone.
“Just me,” I whisper to him. “But you’re okay. You made it.” My throat tightens on the last part. I swallow and press my forehead lightly to his knuckles for one second before I force myself upright again. “You made it,” I repeat, thickly.
I lean closer, careful of the wires, and rest my forehead near his hand for a second, breathing him in—soap, hospital, something faintly familiar underneath it all.
I try to find the man who used to burn grilled cheese because he got distracted watching my soccer games on TV. The man who patched scraped knees and taught me how to change a tire. The man who pretended not to cry when I left for Rutgers.
“I’m here,” I whisper, and my throat aches around it.
My thumb keeps rubbing over his knuckles because if I stop, I might fall apart.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and I don’t even know which sorry I mean. There are too many.
I sit there with him while the machines keep time for me, and the room stays dim, and my hand stays wrapped around his like I’m anchoring him here.
The front door sticks for half a second before it gives, and the familiar scrape of it against the frame makes my throat tighten like it always does.
Only this time, there’s no voice from the kitchen.
No “Hey, kiddo,” drifting through the house like it’s the most normal thing in the world.
Just silence.
I step inside, and the door shuts behind me with a soft, final thud that sounds too loud in an empty house.
The air is stale in that closed-up way, like the house has been holding its breath all day. The porch light Dad insists on leaving on is off. The living room lamp is off. The TV is off. Everything is exactly the way I left it, and that makes it worse.
Because it feels like the house is waiting for him.
My keys clink when I drop them in the bowl by the door, and the sound echoes, thin and sharp. I wince like it’s a punishment.
Dad is in the hospital.
He made it through the surgery.
Those are facts. Solid. Real. I repeat them in my head like I’m reciting something I’m trying to memorize.
But the second I’m in here alone, the other thought slides in underneath them, quiet and cruel.
What if he doesn’t make it through the night?
What if he makes it through the night and doesn’t make it through the week?
What if I walked out of the ICU and that was the last time I saw him alive? With tubes and wires attached to him?
My chest squeezes so hard I can’t pull a full breath.
I take a step farther into the house, and it feels wrong, like I’m trespassing in my own life.
The couch is still covered with the throw blanket I folded this morning. The coffee table has the little stack of mail I keep meaning to sort. A water ring I never wiped up because I was rushing. Normal stupid things that matter too much right now.
I can see the hallway table from here—the one with the framed photo.
The one where my mom’s face smiles out at us.
The one Dad still dusts even when he can barely stand long enough to do it.
The house is quiet in a way that makes my skin prickle.
No TV noise.
No clatter of a spoon against a bowl.
No footfalls in the hallway.
Just the soft hum of the refrigerator motor and the occasional tick of the thermostat.
I take another step, and my legs go weak, like my body finally catches up to the fact that I’ve been holding myself together with my fingernails all day. All week.
The image hits me without warning—walking through this door again.
Tomorrow.
Next week.
Next month.
Forever.
Walking into this house and hearing nothing.
Walking past the kitchen and not seeing him at the stove, pretending he’s fine.
Walking down the hall and not hearing the shower running, not seeing the bathroom light under the door.
No “Goodnight” from his room.
No “How was work?” asked, even when he’s exhausted, even when the answer is boring.
Just emptiness.
My vision blurs instantly.
I blink, hard, but it doesn’t help. Tears spill anyway, hot and fast.
“No,” I whisper, like saying it out loud can stop my brain from writing an ending I don’t want.
My mouth trembles.
My hands shake.
I press my palm to my sternum like I can physically hold my heart in place.
The fear is thick, heavy, choking.
And then the shame crawls up right behind it, because of course it does. Because my head can’t just be one kind of fucked up at a time.
I think of Nico’s hand on mine in the office.
His calm voice.
The way he didn’t flinch when I threw my bitterness at him like a weapon.
You didn’t pay for it this time.
The words replay, and my stomach twists so hard I gag a little.
I hate that I said it.
I hate that I thought it.
I hate that it’s true and not true and all tangled up in the same night that changed everything.
I hate that I feel dirty when I know I chose it.
I hate that I feel chosen when I know I was bought.
I hate that my body still remembers him like it was something good, something safe, something I wanted, even though it shouldn’t have been any of those things.
The shame sits on top of the fear like a second weight, pressing me down until my knees give out.
I don’t do it gracefully.
I just crumple.
One second, I’m standing in the living room, staring at the couch, and the next I’m on the floor, hands covering my face.
The sob that comes out of me is ugly.
Loud.
It punches up from my chest like it’s been waiting all day for the moment I couldn’t hold it in anymore.
I try to swallow it down.
I can’t.
I cry so hard my ribs hurt.
My shoulders shake.
My throat burns.
My breath keeps catching, refusing to steady.
I press my forehead to my knees and rock a little without meaning to, like I’m a kid again and the only thing I know how to do is curl in on myself and wait for someone to fix it.
But there is no one here to fix it.
Dad is in a hospital bed, unconscious, full of tubes and lines.
Maddy is in Montana.
And Nico—
Nico is… Nico. Somewhere in a world I don’t know how to be in without ruining myself.
The thought of him makes my cry hitch, sharp and broken.
Because I don’t want him.
I don’t need him.
I don’t—
I don’t know what I’m saying to myself anymore.
I just know that the empty house is too big, and the silence is too loud, and the fear is crawling under my skin like a living thing.
I drag in a breath that feels like it shreds my throat on the way down.
I wipe my face with the sleeve of my hoodie.
It does nothing.
My hands are shaking so badly, I can barely get them to obey me.
I fumble for my bag, my fingers clumsy, and I yank it closer. I dig through it, not even sure what I’m looking for at first.
Then I find it.
My phone.
With shaking hands, I pull it out.