BEEP
I hold the hand before me.
BEEP
Her hand is warm, on the hospital bed.
BEEP
A car crash.
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My fault? Chance?
BEEP
My call.
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I grip her hand tightly. My father is on her other side. Both her hands are held in vice grips.
BEEP
The doctors say at this point they've done all they can. She'll wake up or she won't. All we can do is sit here and listen to the
BEEP
My eyes are wet but I'm not crying. My emotions are a storm inside me. My eyes leak, my nose runs, but I can't cry. If I cry it's because I've already lost her.
BEEP
She's still here, still fighting. All I can do is offer the same. I'm not crying.
BEEP
I can't be crying.
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My father isn't crying either. We look at each other, eyes wet. A silent agreement.
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You cry when something bad happens, and we don't know how bad what's happened is.
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We don't want to cry wrong.
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A flicker of movement at her eyelids. A tensing of muscles in her fingers. Is she waking up?
BEEP
Am I imagining it?
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Her beautiful hair was cut.
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Too matted with blood.
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I told Dad he should give her a pocket watch chain before she can see what happened to it all.
BEEP
I don't think he understood.
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He thought a wig would be better.
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She can pick her own wig when she wakes up.
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If she wakes up.
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WHEN she wakes up.
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One of the nurses told me to have hope, she can still pull through.
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I told him that I don't have any hope, that hope is for people who lack certainty, that I know, from the bottom of my heart, that Mom is going to make it.
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I told him I don't have hope because I have faith instead.
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He gave me a sad smile.
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How dare he be sad. It's not his mother, here on the hospital bed, clinging to life with her fingertips.
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It's not his father, refusing to meet his eyes after a tearful confession that he'd been on the phone with her when it happened.
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They weren't tears. Tears are what happen when you cry. I can't be crying because she's not dead. She's not going to die. Not today.
BEEP
She can't die. Not when it was my call.
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Not when she'd already told me she got what she was looking for.
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Wrapped neat and tight in the passenger seat.
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She told me she had it but I was too excited. I had to ask again.
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The card had her blood on it now.
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The box was on the table at the end of the room. It was labeled "to Danny, from your owls" but the ink had run.
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Her eyes open.
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I allow myself to feel hope.
BEEP
"Sorry, Danny," she says.
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He doesn't know what she's apologizing for. This could have happened to anyone. All he wants her to do is get better and come home.
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"Sorry, Danny," she says. "Open your present. It's from both of us."
BEEP
Coming home is the only present he wants from her.
My eyes should be full of white hot tears, but there aren't any left.
Moisture runs through my sinus and out my nose.
I wipe it on a sleeve.
It's dirty but I don't care.
I cry but there aren't any tears left.
A nurse moves me aside.
Not the same nurse.
Dad throws out the card. He doesn't want to open it.
I know what's inside.
Happy Fathers' Day
