Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Lina
Comanche County Hospital smelled exactly the way I remembered—antiseptic, bleach, and beneath it all, the stubborn reek of sickness and fear that no amount of industrial cleaning could ever scrub away.
The fluorescent lights overhead buzzed faintly, washing everything in a hard, merciless white that made the pale green walls look even more institutional, even more dead.
Seven years ago, I’d driven away from the only home I’d ever known and never looked back.
Now I was standing here again, and every memory pressed in on me, heavy and airless, as if the building itself had decided to keep me trapped inside the worst parts of my past.
I stood outside my father’s room with my hand hovering over the door handle, unable to make myself push it open.
The brass knob looked cold, almost hostile, and I could feel that chill all the way into my bones—or maybe that was just fear, wearing a shape I could name.
My thoughts spun, frantic and sharp. What was I supposed to say?
What could I possibly offer that would bridge the crater I’d left behind?
I wondered whether he would recognize me at all, or whether my absence had erased me from his mind as thoroughly as I’d tried to erase this place from myself.
Seven years.
It had been seven years since I’d seen him, since I’d spoken to him, since I’d stood in the same room, looked him in the eye, and told him I loved him—back when those words still came easily, before everything had curdled.
Seven years since I’d disappeared without a word, without an explanation, without even a phone call to let him know I was alive.
I hadn’t planned to come back, but Mrs. Patterson’s call had stripped that choice from me.
I hadn’t left on impulse. I’d left because desperation had hollowed me out and handed fear the wheel.
What terrified me now wasn’t his anger. It was the possibility that he’d moved on, that my absence had scarred over into something worse than pain—something empty.
My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I thought it might crack bone.
Each beat felt like a fist pounding from the inside, demanding release, demanding that I turn around and run the way I’d been running for seven long years.
Sweat gathered at my temples despite the hospital’s aggressive air conditioning.
The past clung to me like a second skin, and the present felt thin and breakable, stretched over whatever waited on the other side of that door.
What was I supposed to say?
Hi, Dad. Sorry I vanished. Sorry I let you think I was dead—or worse. Sorry I never called, never wrote, never gave you any proof that I was okay. I was pregnant and terrified and convinced the father of my baby had been murdered in a massacre, so I ran.
Yeah. That would go over well.
I drew in a breath and forced myself steady.
Tatum was with Mrs. Patterson back at the house, safe and occupied with cookies and cartoons. I’d left her there on purpose because I had no idea what kind of reception I’d get from my father, and I wasn’t about to let her get caught in the blast radius if this went the way I expected.
When this went badly.
Because it would. I knew it.
I pushed the door open.
The room felt impossibly small, the air thick and oppressive, as if every breath I took weighed more than the last. The hospital bed dominated the cramped space, ringed by blinking monitors and IV stands crowding it like silent witnesses.
Their mechanical beeps tangled with the shallow rhythm of my breathing.
The scent was sharp and sterile, tinged with a sweetness I couldn’t name, one that coiled in my throat and turned my stomach.
Afternoon sunlight cut through the half-drawn blinds in jagged slats, striping the battered linoleum and throwing thin, shifting shadows across the floor.
Dust floated in those blades of light, suspended and stubborn against the silence.
I stood frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe. My chest felt tight, as if someone had wrapped iron bands around my ribs and pulled. My throat burned, raw with all the things I wanted to say but couldn’t force past my lips.
That was it. That was all there was.
Seven long years of silence. Seven years of waiting and wondering and rehearsing what I’d say if I ever saw him again.
And that was all I got. A look. A single, fleeting glance before he turned away.
A cold stare that cut right through me, saying everything he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—put into words.
All the anger, hurt, and resentment compressed into one devastating moment of eye contact.
You left us. You abandoned us. You don’t get to just walk back in like nothing happened.
I swallowed hard and forced myself to turn toward the bed.
My father was awake.
David Wilcox lay propped against a stack of pillows, his face pale and drawn, his hair grayer than I remembered.
The fluorescent lights carved harsh shadows into his features, deepening the lines around his mouth and eyes.
He looked smaller than he should have, diminished by the thin hospital gown and the tangle of wires connecting him to machines that beeped and hummed with indifferent precision.
An IV bag hung beside the bed, feeding clear fluid into his arm through a thin tube.
The whole room smelled of antiseptic and that peculiar sterile odor hospitals wore like a second skin.
But his eyes—those sharp, assessing eyes that had always seen straight through me, that had never missed a detail or let a lie slide by—were wide with shock.
They locked onto mine the instant I stepped through the doorway, and in them I saw something I had never seen before: genuine surprise, and maybe the first spark of anger.
“Lina?”
His voice cracked on my name, rough and disbelieving, like he thought I might be a hallucination. A trick of the medication, or the pain, or the exhaustion. Like his mind was playing games with him after hours of lying in that sterile hospital bed, staring at the fluorescent lights overhead.
“Hi, Dad.” My voice came out quieter than I intended. Shakier. I could hear the tremor in it, the uncertainty I had tried so hard to bury during the entire drive there.
He blinked once, then again, like he was trying to make sense of the fact that I was real—that I was standing in front of him and not some ghost his exhausted mind had conjured.
His eyes, still sharp despite everything, tracked over my face as if searching for proof that I was flesh and blood and not a fever dream.
“What—” He stopped, then cleared his throat, wincing at the effort. “What are you doing here?”
I moved closer, my hands twisting together in front of me, my fingers knotting and unknotting in that nervous habit I had never quite managed to break. “Mrs. Patterson called. She told me you’d fallen. That you were in the hospital.” I hesitated, then added, “She sounded worried.”
His expression shifted immediately, confusion giving way to irritation. His jaw tightened, his mouth flattening into a thin, familiar line—the look I’d seen a thousand times before.
“Damn it,” he muttered, his voice rough with frustration. “I told her not to call you.”
His words hit like a slap across the face, sharp and stinging.
I stopped a few feet from the bed, frozen in place, my chest tightening until it hurt. My throat closed like invisible hands had wrapped around it and squeezed. The air in the room suddenly felt thick enough to drown in.
He didn’t want me here.
He specifically told Mrs. Patterson not to call me, not to drag me back into his life, not to involve me in whatever was happening with his health. He had made it clear—crystal clear—that I was the last person he wanted to see.
Because he still hadn’t forgiven me. He knew I’d left without saying goodbye.
Knew I’d disappeared into the night like a coward.
Knew I’d cut ties and run as far and as fast as I could, never once looking back.
And he didn’t want me here now, standing at his bedside as if I had any right to be worried.
“Dad.”
“Where the hell have you been, Carolina?”
His voice was sharp now. Angry. The shock had worn off, replaced by something harder, something that had clearly been building for seven years. I could see it in the tension of his jaw, the way his shoulders were rigid, the fire burning behind his eyes.
“You just”—he gestured vaguely, his hand shaking with the effort—“left. No phone call. No letter. No explanation. No warning. Nothing. One day you were here, and the next you were gone, and I had no idea—” His voice cracked, the anger fraying at the edges into something rawer.
“I had no idea if you were alive or dead. If you were safe. If something had happened to you. If you’d been hurt, or taken, or—” He stopped himself and pressed his lips together as if holding the rest of it in by force.
“Do you have any idea what that was like? Wondering every single day for months if I would ever see my daughter again?”
Guilt crashed over me like a wave, cold and suffocating. It filled my lungs and made it hard to breathe. I wanted to look away from him, to escape the weight of his gaze, but I forced myself to hold it. I owed him that much, at least.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“Sorry?” He let out a bitter laugh, shaking his head.
“You’re sorry? Lina, I spent months trying to find you.
I called everyone I could think of. I filed a missing person report.
I thought—” He stopped, his jaw working, his eyes bright with something that looked dangerously close to tears. “I thought you were dead.”
“I couldn’t—” My voice broke. “I couldn’t stay.”
“Why not?” he demanded. “What happened? What could possibly have been so bad that you had to disappear without a word? That you couldn’t even pick up the damn phone and tell me you were okay?”
I opened my mouth. Closed it.