"Cal, listen to me. Your dad fell. He's hurt. Ambulance is taking him to Harbor Hill General right now."
The kitchen is bright, sunlight cutting across the counter in clean lines, and Poppy's voice doesn't belong here. It belongs somewhere else, somewhere loud and chaotic, not in this quiet room where the only sound a second ago was ice settling in my glass. My hand tightens around it. The water trembles.
"H-how bad?"
"Just his leg and he was conscious the whole time," she says, and I hear her trying to give me something to hold onto. "He was talking, was making jokes before the ambulance even got there."
The blood rush in my ears subsides. Okay. Okay. Bones heal. Six weeks in a cast, maybe eight if he's stubborn aboutphysical therapy, which he will be. Back at the bench swearing at walnut before summer.
This is fine. This is manageable. This is a minor inconvenience and a funny story for the diner and nothing more. But my hand is still shaking. Fuck.
Dad is all I have. The thought lands hard and stays there. He's my father, my best friend. The only person who's been there every single day of my life. Broken leg is nothing, but Dad was on the ground and I wasn't there. I set the glass down, like if I move too fast, something else will break.
"I'm on my way."
"Cal?" Her voice goes careful.
"Yeah?" This definitely can't be good.
"Ehm. Lily rode with him in the ambulance."
Everything stops. "Lily?" The name comes out harder than I mean it to. "Why the fuck?"
"She was helping him unload the rocking chair when it happened. The weight shifted and she bumped him and he went down. Cal, she's really upset. She thinks it was her fault. Your dad kept telling her it wasn't but she was…"
Poppy pauses, searching for the right word. "She wouldn't let go of his hand. The paramedic asked if she was family and she said yes."
I stand very still in the kitchen. The house needs to be warmer for when he gets home. I need to call the firehouse. Take time off. Will the recliner be comfortable enough or should I set up the couch? Where are my keys? Is the car charged? Where are my socks?
But the detail that breaks through all of it, the one that sticks like a splinter under skin: She told the paramedic she was family.
"Cal? Are you there?"
"I'm coming." I hang up before she can say anything else.
I give my father's name at the front desk and the woman behind the counter doesn't even look up from her screen before saying, "Room four."
The door to room four is open. I hear him before I see him, chipper as ever, voice carrying down the hallway like he's holding court instead of lying in a hospital bed.
"... and the boy used to follow me around the workshop in his diaper. Couldn't string two words together, but he'd stand at the bench and watch me sand for an hour. Never cried. Never fussed. Just watched with those big eyes of his.”
He chuckles, but there's pain underneath it, and he's trying to hide it from whoever's listening.
"His mother used to say he was born patient. I think he was just born stubborn. He gets that from me."
Dad is telling baby stories about me. To her, of all people. Leg broken, hospital bed, and he's offering warmth like it costs him nothing, like he has an endless supply of it. That's my dad in his entirety.
I step into the doorway and everything I thought I was prepared for flies out the window. Dad is propped up against the pillows, pale, drawn, hospital gown making him look smaller and older than he has any right to look. The pain is visible in the way he holds his body, but his eyes are alert.
He's going to be okay. I knew it the whole drive. But my legs almost give out anyway. Because of her.
Lily is sitting in a chair pulled right up to the mattress, knees pressed against the bed frame, leaning forward with both hands wrapped around one of Dad's.
Her hair falls over one shoulder, tangled from runningher hands through it too many times. There's dirt on both sweater sleeves. Gravel, probably, from the driveway. Dark wet patches on both knees of her jeans where she knelt on cold ground beside him.
Her face. Fuck, her face. Bloodshot eyes with lashes still clumped together from crying, nose pink, bottom lip swollen probably from biting it too hard for too long. She looks wrecked. Completely, utterly wrecked.
And Dad… Dad is comforting her. His thumb moves back and forth across her knuckles, and the look on his face is easy, unhurried, like she'd always been his.
