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"What face?"
"That one."
I frowned. "I have no idea what you mean."
"The one where you act like you’re not scared at all."
I forced a weak smile. "Maybe I just look ugly."
"You’re definitely ugly."
"Thanks a lot."
He smiled as they started wheeling him out the door. I walked beside him, matching my steps with the slow roll of the bed.
"Love you, Dad." I said again, who knows if I’d ever again get the chance to say that.
"Love you too, Ollie."
I kept walking until the doors slid shut between us, and just like that, he was gone.
I stood there, staring at the doors. Damien’s hand landed gently on my shoulder. I didn’t budge. I wasn’t sure I had it in me to move.
Eventually, he led me toward the waiting area, keeping his arm around me the entire way.
The first hour dragged on. The second felt endless. By the third, I knew the pattern on the waiting room floor by heart, an unremarkable speckled gray tile that I could probably draw from memory now.
I sat, stood, paced, checked the time, sat again, and then checked the time once more. I wondered if checking the clock would magically speed things up. Spoiler: it didn’t.
10:17.
I stared at my phone. Three minutes later, I checked again.
10:20.
"That’s just not fair."
Damien glanced up from his phone. "What?"
"I’ve been waiting forever."
"It’s been three minutes."
"Exactly." I said, " they should enforce a rule in hospitals to give patient’s families updates on surgeries every five minutes."
He gave me a look.
I dropped back into the chair, the plastic creaking beneath me, as if it were judging my anxiety. "I hate this."
"It’ll be okay."
I rubbed my palms against my jeans, the silence wrapping around us, broken only by distant pagers and the occasional squeak of shoes on the linoleum.
Eventually, Damien reached for my hand, and I didn’t even realize how much it was shaking until he did.
"You’re shaking."
"I’m cold."
"It’s warm in here."
"I’m emotionally cold."
He smirked. "That’s not really a thing."
"It is now."
He pulled me closer, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. I leaned into his warmth without a care for who might see us.
The whole hospital pretty much thought we were boyfriends anyways.
Hours crawled by. People passed in and out of the waiting room. Doctors strolled through the hallways. Nurses murmured to each other.
With every set of footsteps approaching, my heart raced. And when they moved past us, the cycle of hope and disappointment left me feeling more hollow each time.
At one point, I buried my face against Damien’s shoulder. "What if he doesn’t wake up?"
Damien stayed silent. He didn’t give me the reassuring answer I desperately wanted to hear. He didn’t say, He will. He didn’t make promises he couldn’t keep because no matter how he was...he had no power over life.
Instead, his arm tightened around me.
"We’ll handle whatever comes our way."
I swallowed hard. "I don’t want to deal with that."
"I know."
"I just want my dad back."
His fingers ran slowly through my hair, the touch both absent and soothing. "We’ll take this one step at a time."
I closed my eyes and nodded. "Okay."
It wasn’t outright comfort, but it was something solid, something I could cling to.
Nearly right hours later, the waiting room door opened and I looked up.
Doctor Morgan stepped inside, and my heart nearly stopped.
I jumped to my feet, scraping my chair on the floor loud enough to attract some curious glances. "Doctor?"
Damien stood beside me.
Doctor Morgan wore a tired but reassuring expression that told me nothing and everything at the same time. "The surgery is over."
I struggled to breathe.
He continued, "The transplant went as well as we could hope. There were no major complications, and his vital signs are stable right now."
I felt like my knees might buckle. I grabbed the back of the chair for support. "So, he’s okay?"
"He’s stable."
I exhaled shakily. "Oh, thank God."
The doctor nodded, but then the relief faded almost instantly. "But there’s something you need to understand."
My heart sank, oh here we go. "What?"
"Your father hasn’t regained consciousness yet."
I blinked at him, unable to comprehend. "He hasn’t...woken up?"
"Not yet."
I swallowed. "Okay."
"The surgery was very taxing on his body. He’s currently in a medically induced coma, and we’re keeping a close watch on him."
I frowned. "How long?"
Doctor Morgan hesitated. "We can’t say."
My chest tightened. "You mean..."
"We don’t know when he’ll wake up."
I stared at him, trying to process the words, the surgery was a success. His body accepted the transplant it seemed. He was stable. Those should be good things, right? So why did I feel like another weight just landed on my chest?
"Could he..." I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Doctor Morgan seemed to know what I meant. "It’s too early to determine what his recovery will look like. The next few days and weeks will be crucial."
"So he could wake up?"
"Yes."
"But he might not?"
Doctor Morgan looked at me carefully for a moment, choosing his next words delicately as if I was something fragile.
"Like I said, it’s too early to say. We’ll need to keep a close eye on him."
I nodded, unsure what else to say. "Can...can I see him?"
"Not right away, but we’ll let you know as soon as you can."
"Okay."
Doctor Morgan gave me a sympathetic glance before stepping back, his footsteps echoing down the hall.
I stood there, Damien by my side, and neither of us spoke.
My dad was alive. The transplant worked. He was stable, fhat should have made me feel relieved. Instead, I felt numb.
I looked down at my hands. "What happens next?"
Damien moved closer. "Now we wait."
I chuckled weakly. "Apparently, that seems to be all I’ve been doing lately, I really don’t like doing that crap."
He wrapped his arm around my waist. I leaned against him.
"What if he doesn’t wake up?"
Damien looked down at me. "I don’t know."
The honesty stung, but in a weird way, it also helped, like the comfort of a simple truth was easier to accept than an empty promise.
He rested his forehead against mine. "But you won’t have to face it alone."
My eyes teared up as I nodded. "I’m so glad I have you, Damien. I don’t know what I would have done with you. Thank you so much."
His expression softened. "I’m glad I have you too, sunshine."
I closed my eyes and leaned fully against him, my father survived the surgery. He was alive, that should be enough.
But it wasn’t.