The Billionaire's Matraich

The hospital was awfully quiet for too long. I was sitting on one of the plastic seats in the waiting area, those ones that you keep adjusting every few minutes so your ass doesn't get sore in one position. I tried to avoid looking at the clock on the wall. It had been ticking loudly for a while now. Or maybe it only felt loud because everything else was quiet. My brother was lying asleep on my shoulder. His lips were parted a little, his lashes against his cheek, and he had no idea how long he had been sleeping. I couldn't move because I didn’t want to wake him only if he knew my arm had gone numb, but that felt like a small price to pay. If I stayed still enough, maybe the world would do the same. My mum was sitting a few seats away, holding her handbag as though it would vanish once she released it. She had not spoken in a long time. She rubbed her palms together for a few minutes and wiped them against her skirt. She kept doing that, over and over again, like she was trying to clean something only she could see off her skin. We had rushed here earlier, so fast that my heart was still beating too hard in my chest. Dad had collapsed at home. That was all I knew. One moment, he was complaining about the generator making noise again, and the next, he was on the floor. Everything after that was a blur of sirens, my mum screaming, and I was attempting to hold back the tears because my brother was there ,and I knew he shouldn't see me that way. I told myself hospitals were made for fixing things. That was their whole purpose. People came in broken and left patched up. That’s how it worked. It had to work. I looked at the end of the corridor and the double doors marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Every time they opened, my chest tightened. Every time they closed, I exhaled like I’d been holding my breath without realizing it. I thought about my dad’s hands. They were always rough, always warm. I I recalled the way he would tap twice on the table when he had something on his mind, as though he was knocking on his thoughts. I recalled how he had told me that I should not worry that much but that everything did not have to be fixed right now. Now I could see the irony of that. Time passed quickly. I didn’t realize how long we’d been there. Minutes felt like hours. Hours went by, and as it passed, the heavy feeling in my chest stayed. When the doctor finally walked toward us, I recognized the look on his face before he even spoke. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t cruel. It was practiced. That was what scared me the most. “Who is the next of kin please?”He asked I stood up before my mum could answer. My legs felt strange, like they didn’t belong to me, but I stayed upright. My brother stirred, stretched his leg to the next chair, and lay down straight on both chairs, but somehow didn’t wake up. “I’m the one,” I answered. The doctor explained things calmly but I couldn't hear everything he was saying. I just heard; Cardiac arrest. They had done everything they could. I heard his words, but they had not settled down. I said yes at the right time since it seemed to be the right thing to say. I waited for him to say something else. Something that reversed everything he had just said, maybe after minutes of CPR, they managed to get him back but he didn’t. “I’m so sorry,” he finished. That was when the room shifted. Not dramatically. Just enough that I knew something had gone wrong. I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t fall apart the way people in movies did. I just felt… empty. Numb but with a plunged hole in my chest, like someone had scooped something essential out of me, and I managed to still be up. Then my mom made this sound. It was like a broken and tuneless flute, which I had never heard from her before. She stretched out to me, and I grabbed her since that was the right thing to do even though I did not feel like being physically close to anyone at that point. My brother woke up confused, asking what was happening, and I told him Dad was sick and resting. The lie slipped out easily. Too easily. I knew I'd eventually tell him but I just couldn't say it yet. One of the nurses came and provided us with paperwork and water. She told us what to do next. I listened, I memorized, I put everything aside like a list of instructions I would have to refer to later. I noticed at some point that no one was giving directions to me any longer. They were waiting and looking at me to tell them what was to be done next. That was when it hit me. This wasn't just grief. It was an immediate responsibility. I stared at the face of my mum, wet, with unfocused eyes. Definitely, she did not resemble a person who could make decisions. I looked at my brother, clutching my sleeve like I might disappear if he let go. And without anyone saying it out loud, something felt different. There was no one else. It was just us now. I signed the papers with my hands shaking and trying to grip the pen firmly. I answered questions, and I arranged for the body to be moved to the mortuary. I nodded when people spoke to me like I was older than I was. When we stepped out of the hospital, the sky was already dark. We had spent the whole day in the hospital. Cars drove past. People laughed somewhere nearby. Life went on as usual as though it hadn’t just taken something from me and walked away. I helped my mum into the car. I buckled my brother’s seatbelt. I sat in the front seat, turned the key, started the car, and stared straight ahead. I told myself I would cry later. I told myself I just needed to get through today. Whatever, don't think about it yet cause thinking about it would make it true, and I wasn't ready to face that yet. What I didn’t tell myself, because I didn’t realize it yet, was that this was only the beginning. Losing my father was the first thing that would collapse. And that I was about to become so meone I hadn’t planned to be. My whole world was about to change.