The phone call came in the middle of a consult note, a bright stab of panic through a quiet morning. Sylvia’s voice was thin and small on the line.
“It’s Arthur,” she said. “He’s upstairs. He had a stroke.”
The world folded. Instruments on the tray blurred into watercolor. Sari’s hands went cold. She dropped the pen and sprinted out of the clinic like someone trying to outrun bad news.
Her father was on a stretcher when she arrived, slate-faced and breathing shallow. The ER team moved with the clinical efficiency of people who had seen this before, but Sari felt none of their distance. She felt only the hot, raw collapse of everything she had been trying to hold together.
“How bad?” she asked, voice brittle.
“They say mild,” Sylvia said, eyes wet but steady. “He’s stable for now. The
