Chapter Seven
Lola
I’ve been sitting in my dad’s chair for two hours.
I know this because the clock on the wall keeps ticking loudly enough to feel personal, and the moon outside has shifted just enough to cast shadows across the carpet.
I have not moved or eaten. I haven’t even turned on the television.
I am just sitting here, curled into a chair that’s too big for me, staring at the blank wall across the room as if it might hold an answer to a question I cannot voice.
The house has a faint hospital smell. I think I brought it back home with me.
I spent the entire day sitting beside his bed, watching machines breathe for him, seeing his chest rise and fall in a rhythm that doesn’t belong to him. Occasionally, a nurse would come in, adjust something, and speak in that quiet, careful voice they use when they aren’t sure if you are fragile.
He hasn’t spoken in two days.
A part of me keeps replaying our last real conversation, trying to remember every detail. Did I say I loved him before I left the house that morning? Did I roll my eyes at him? Did I laugh? The details blur, and that terrifies me.
Not only that, but Jace was different with me today when we got to the hospital.
Not the loud, smirking, I-don’t-give-a-shit version he wears at school. Not the cocky shit who leans back in his chair and watches girls trip over themselves for him. This was something else.
I sensed it before I could put a name to it.
I saw it happen in real time.
He stood in the corner with his usual careless posture, hands in his pockets.
I could feel him watching us, and something in him shifted.
His shoulders stiffened, every line of him strained as if the air itself had thickened.
The cocky tilt of his head. His gaze became expressionless.
Back to his resident fuck boy reporting for duty. That is the part that keeps replaying.
Jace’s eyes. They did not hold sarcasm, heat, or that lazy hunger he wears when he’s trying to get under my skin. They became empty. Cold. Sealed off.
I saw the wall go up.
I watched him shut down right in front of me. He was so different from the boy who comforted me in the kitchen this morning.
He muttered something about going to work. His voice was steady, as if he had locked away every emotion deep inside.
Then he walked out.
I told myself it was okay. That sterile hallways and beeping machines don’t suit a boy who fucks first and thinks never. He avoids vulnerability. And he definitely doesn’t do fragile fathers and daughters clinging to hope.
He does sex and smirks. He burns through girls the way other guys burn through cigarettes. Quick fuck, quick fix. No attachments.
I know that.
But it still hit.
That split second when his jaw clenched and his eyes went blank, and I felt him pull away. His wall didn’t just slide into place; it snapped up suddenly.
I’ve been thinking about that moment all day.
My phone feels heavy in my hand, the screen dark, reflecting a distorted version of my face back at me. I press the button, and it bursts to life, too bright against the quiet of the room.
Sam’s message is still open.
Sam: Hey where are you? I haven’t seen you today.
The words stare back at me, casual and harmless, completely unaware of the crater my life has become.
The timestamp sits beneath it in small grey numbers.
11:02 AM.
It is almost midnight now. Thirteen hours of silence. It shouldn’t take this long to answer a simple question.
I have opened and closed it so many times that the motion has become automatic now—thumb pressing, screen lighting up, thumb pressing again, and the screen going dark.
My thumbs hovered over the keyboard, and I started typing things all day to send to her, then stopped and erased it before the words had a chance to settle.
Yeah, just at the hospital with my dad.
Delete.
Oh, nothing much, just watching my father breathe through a machine.
Delete.
By the way, my dad had a stroke two days ago, but you wouldn’t know because I didn’t tell you.
Delete.
I’m also tutoring Jace, and I let him kiss me.
Delete.
And no, he doesn’t kiss, but I asked him to, and he did.
Delete.
And I promised him it wouldn’t get weird, but all I can think about is his mouth on mine and how I want him to do it again until I can’t breathe.
Delete.
Every version seems either too small or too dramatic. Too casual for something that is swallowing me whole.
I try again now.
Sorry, I’ve just been busy.
Busy.
The word makes my stomach turn. Busy sounds productive. It sounds normal. Busy does not mean sitting beside a hospital bed, counting the seconds between machine beeps, and pretending your heart isn’t in your throat.
How do you condense all of that into a simple reply? How do you fit grief and fear into a text message that won’t make everything blow up?
I stare at the words on the screen until they become blurry. My reflection looks back at me in the dark parts of the display. My eyes appear hollow.
I still haven’t replied to Aubrey’s text from yesterday either.
I left it sitting there, just like this one.
She hasn’t followed up and didn’t send a second message with nothing but question marks.
I have become that friend—the one who disappears. The one who ghosts the group chat and expects everyone to just understand there’s a reason without ever explaining it. The person who withdraws and then becomes upset when things proceed without them.
I hate that version of myself because the truth isn’t that they wouldn’t understand.
They would. God, I know they would. It’s just something that I don’t want to explain.
I don’t want to unpack the hospital smell still clinging to my clothes.
I don’t want to type the word coma and watch it turn real on a screen.
I don’t want to say I let Jace kiss me and now I’m tangled in something I promised would stay simple.
It is easier to vanish than to confess.
I toss my phone onto the cushion next to me and watch it bounce once before settling face down.
The room is too silent.
I lean forward and slide my glasses up onto the top of my head, the frames catching in my hair for a second before settling. Everything becomes slightly blurred without them.
I press my palms into my eyes until bursts of color explode behind my lids. Red. Gold. White. Bright enough to almost burn. I push harder, as if the pressure can force grief, fear, and stupid longing for a fuck boy out through my skull.
My breath comes out unevenly against my wrists.
Nothing changes.
The silence stays.
I push myself up from the chair and walk into the kitchen. I open the fridge and stand there staring at the shelves filled with food that suddenly seem pointless. Leftovers in containers. Vegetables in the crisper. Milk. Eggs. Bread. Everything exactly where it should be.
Dad always cooks. He complains the whole time, muttering about how I would burn the house down if left unsupervised. He still stands at the stove, stirring sauces and pretending he’s not checking over his shoulder to make sure I am not about to set something on fire.
The kitchen feels wrong without him.
No sarcastic comments about my inability to chop onions evenly. No garlic smell filling the air.
I close the fridge and lean back against the counter for a moment, staring into space, swallowing against the lump in my throat. I guess I’m hungry. I have to be. But the thought of cooking in this house without him feels wrong.
I step back from the counter and head into the living room.
His chair waits there. I sink into it again, the cushion dipping under my weight, and grab my phone from the cushion beside me. The screen lights up immediately.
I open Instagram instead because staring at Sam’s message is beginning to feel self-destructive.
Aubrey’s story appears at the top of the screen, with her profile ring glowing.
I tap it.
The image takes up my screen.
It is taken inside a diner booth. The lighting is warm.
Sam is smiling directly at the camera, showing all teeth and confidence.
Reece is leaning back beside her with that lazy smirk he wears when he thinks he owns the room.
Aubrey is mid-laugh, her head tilted back.
Noah is partly turned toward her, watching her instead of the camera.
They look bright. Alive. Together.
The caption says, “Late night chaos with my fav.”
Fav.
The word lodges somewhere in my throat.
They look easy. Effortless. Lost in their own little world. There is no awkward gap in the booth. No space where I should be. No sign that anything is missing.
I hold my thumb to the screen and stare at the photo longer than I intend to.
I was at the hospital when this happened, sitting beside my father’s bed in a squeaky chair every time I shifted. Holding his hand as it lay limp in mine.
And they were all out together. Laughing. Living in a world where the worst thing happening is probably just some stupid drama at school.
Jealousy strikes quickly and harshly. It’s ugly. Instant. Sharp enough to make me flinch.
I don’t want to resent them for being okay. It’s not their fault. They don’t know about the coma or how scared I am. They don’t realize that I am sitting in an empty house that feels too big for one person.
But the distance still feels real.
I swipe out of the story before I can dissect it any further and exit Instagram.
I go to my saved audio messages.
My dad’s last one is at the top. It is from the night before everything changed.
My finger trembles slightly as I hit play. Then his voice echoes through the room. “Button, I’m running late. Traffic is a nightmare and some idiot nearly took out my bumper.”
He sounds solid. Annoyed at traffic.
“Do not cook anything,” he continues. “I repeat, do not cook anything. I do not want to come home to smoke alarms and you pretending you know what you’re doing.”
I can picture his face clearly. The fake stern expression. The raised eyebrow. The way he tries to sound serious but fails because the corners of his mouth always twitch when he talks to me.
There is a faint sound of a turn signal clicking in the background.
“Lock the doors. All of them. Even the back one you always forget. And stay out of my snack drawer. I counted what’s in there.”
He always acts like I am a criminal mastermind stealing chocolate bars.
There is a pause. I hear him exhale, and the tone shifts slightly to a softer pitch.
“I’ll grab takeout. Your favourite. Don’t argue. I know you’re going to argue. Just let me be the responsible adult for once.”
Another small pause.
“Love ya. See you soon.”
The message ends.
For a moment, I sit there smiling at nothing, caught up in the memory of him walking through the front door with greasy paper bags.
My smile fades away.
He said, ‘See you soon.’
He left this house expecting to return to it.
He had no idea that the next day he would be lying in a hospital bed while machines handled the work his body forgot how to do.
Then reality crashes back in.
He is neither late nor stuck in traffic. He isn’t about to walk through that front door.
Instead he is lying in a hospital bed, eyes closed, skin pale, chest rising because a machine tells it to.
All it would take is one call.
One gentle voice on the other end saying, “I’m sorry, Lola. You need to come in. Your dad is not going to wake up.”
That is the gap between now and a completely different life.
One call and everything I know would split down the middle.
My breathing suddenly becomes ragged. It catches halfway through and comes out shaky. There’s a pressure in my chest, as if something is pressing against my ribs from the inside.
I stare at my phone as if it might light up and prove that fear right.
What if he never walks back into this house again?
What if his voice becomes a recording I replay at three in the morning just to remember how he says “Button,” the way he tries to sound stern and fails.
The thought does not creep in gently. It detonates and something inside me splinters. The sob comes out. It folds me in half before I can catch it. My hand flies to my mouth but it does nothing to stop the sound.
Another one comes, harsher. My shoulders shake violently, breath hitching in ragged pulls that burn on the way in and scrape on the way out. Tears spill fast and hot, blurring everything.
I try to breathe in, but it stutters, caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat. I press my fist against my chest as if I can physically hold myself together.
My whole body trembles with it—grief, fear, and the image of this house without him… all come crashing over me in waves that are impossible to stay above.
I need air.
I need noise.
I need something louder than my thoughts.
If I remain in this house for another minute, I’m convinced I’ll drown in it.