Leah
By later that day, the hospital had stopped feeling like an emergency and started feeling like a situation.
That was almost worse.
The first night had been terror. The next day was waiting. Machines still beeped. Nurses still came and went. My father was still sedated. Everyone spoke in careful voices and used words like stable and monitoring and cautiously optimistic, which meant nothing had fallen apart yet.
I knew how to wait with other people.
I did it at Haven House all the time.
Waiting for my own father to wake up was different.
I sat beside his bed for my five minutes and talked to him the way I had learned to talk to people who could not answer. Not performing. Not filling silence because silence made me uncomfortable. Just being there.
“Bella’s good,” I said. “She ke
