“Everything’s fine, dad,” she whispered. “I’m doing well.”
Her voice almost broke apart by the end.
“I’ll visit soon, okay? I’m going to hang up for now. I need to take a bath.”
“Alright,” Jonathan said gently. “Take care of yourself. I’ll wait for you.”
His loving voice nearly shattered the little control she had left.
The call ended.
The moment the line disconnected, Amara’s hand loosened. The phone slipped from her fingers and fell onto the floor carelessly.
***
The hospital was terrifying.
The white walls felt terrifying.
The white lights felt terrifying.
Even the smell of antiseptic in the air made fear crawl deeper inside Amara’s chest as she sat quietly outside the doctor’s office.
Every sound inside the hospital echoed clearly in her ears. The distant beeping of machines. Nurses walking through the hallways. The wheels of stretchers moving across the floor. Quiet conversations between doctors somewhere nearby.
Footsteps.
Doors opening and closing.
She could hear everything.
Yet somehow, she felt numb to all of it.
Her fingers tightened around the edge of the freezing metal seat beneath her, her knuckles slowly turning pale.
Her heartbeat was painfully fast.
Amara had always been terrified of needles. Ever since childhood, even the sight of one was enough to make her nervous. But over the past few days, needles had pierced her skin so many times for blood tests, medicines, and endless scans that the fear had slowly faded away.
Blood tests.
IV drips.
Scans.
Injections.
At some point, that fear had been replaced by something far worse.
The surgery.
The thought of entering that operation room and never waking up again terrified her so badly that she could barely breathe sometimes. Every time her eyes lifted toward the closed doors down the hallway, her chest tightened painfully.
For the past month, doctors had explained everything to her repeatedly. They talked about risks, complications, surgery procedures, recovery, medicines, and precautions until her head hurt from hearing it all.
There had been endless tests and so many instructions that she barely had time to process any of it properly.
If Juliet had not stayed by her side through everything, Amara knew she probably would have never agreed to the surgery at all.
