Intertwined

The Day It All Changed

He was sleeping. My sisters and I were sitting next to his sleeping body. My youngest sister Estrella, was crying to my right while to my left my other sister Luna stared emotionlessly at his body on the hospital gurney. I sat in the middle on the cold cushioned bench, with my arms around both of them, their head in the crook of my neck as if I were trying to shield them from this nightmare. I told my sisters to cover their ears as our mother was speaking with the doctor only five feet away. I only heard a few words, "brain... aneurism... stroke... hours."

Those words confirmed my worst nightmare, I was never going to see my dad smile again, I would never hear his laugh, I would never get to feel his embrace again, and I would never feel his calloused hands on the top of my head ever again. And I would never get to see him at my high school graduation party. 

The weekend I graduated from high school was supposed to be some of the happiest days I was supposed to remember. Now a vague memory of me walking across the stage to get my diploma and my family screaming my name, my father being the loudest, his voice echoing around the coliseum. I remember the commotion the graduating class of 2022 created after leaving the building trying to find our families, and I remember the smile on my face when realizing my family was wearing matching shirts with my name in blue letters on them. I remember my face the day after excited that I got to have my graduation party after church. While I was there, I realized my cousin had texted me, my first thought was that she wanted to congratulate me, but I soon found out that that wasn't the case. 

She sent me directions to a hospital and told me that my family and I needed to get there as soon as possible because my dad had been admitted to the emergency room. I remember my heart drop and my mother's frightened face when I showed her the message. I remember my leg shaking in the back seat of the car while a family friend, Eddie, drove frantically to the hospital. My dad didn't go to church with us that day, he had some big work project that he needed to finish, but he had promised to meet us at our favorite Peruvian place afterwards. On the drive there I kept wondering what happened to my dad, did he fall? Did he accidentally slice a limb off? 

When we got there, my sisters, my mom, and I ran inside, the smell of hand sanitizer quickly enveloped us and overpowered every scent in the lobby. The nurses with shiny white scrubs and blue masks led us to his room, the sign on the wooden door read "Critical One." The first thing I remember after stepping into that room was hearing him snore, he looked like he was in a deep sleep, like when he got off of work and he would lay on the couch and doze off within seconds of just laying there, he looked okay, he was asleep. But when I looked at the doctor in the corner, his eyes told me something different, his face might not have given anything away but his eyes held sadness and I knew that the next words out of his mouth were going to change my life. 

I suddenly felt suffocated in the small white room with bright lights, I felt as if I were choking on air, but I could not let my sisters feel my panic. I told Luna to hug Estrella as I stood up and quickly told my teary eye mom that I would be right back, as I began walking to the lobby I felt as if everyone's eyes in the hallway were looking at me, like every nurse and patient knew what was happening, as if they could read my mind. As if they could tell my face that I was going to break soon. And they were right. As soon as I reached the lobby I screamed into Eddie's arm, I broke into horrible gut-wrenching sobs and screams, and his wife Angela who had also been with us at church when we hurried out tried to get me to calm down and to breathe. But I could not breathe, I could not think, I could not see, and all I could hear around me was white noise and my own screams.

When I collapsed to my knees in sorrow, I heard Eddie asking one of the nurses if there was an empty room they could take me into to calm down. Once I could finally take some deep breaths, I told them what happened, I stared at a horrible painting of a farm while telling them what the doctor had said, a five-year-old could paint a better picture than that, and I kept staring at that painting hoping it would get better, hoping that the lights would stop getting brighter, hoping that the room would stop spinning, hoping that what I heard the doctor say was not true, hoping that my dad wasn't truly dying. 

He looked and sounded like he was sleeping, his snores filled the room, and his dark black hair looked all wild while he was lying on the hospital pillow. He was wearing a hospital gown that allowed us to see his tattoos on his arm, the initials "S" "L" and "E" stood out against everything else, and it made me smile while I held his hand. As hours passed family and friends came to visit the hospital room, they had moved us into a bigger room, one where the lights weren't so bright and didn't have the overpowering scent of hand sanitizer. 

I would kiss his forehead now and then throughout the evening, and when I held his hand, I could feel his warmth leaving slightly every time and his snores would get softer every moment. I like to believe that he left this world in peace and that he was not in pain when he passed away in his sleep. I'd like to believe that he could hear every word that we were saying, even though the doctors said there was no way of telling, I hope that he could hear the prayers we said, the stories we told, and even the crying because we would miss him so much. And I genuinely believe that he heard me promise that I would protect our family no matter what. 

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Word Count: 1108

Thank you guys for reading the first chapter of Intertwined, I hope you guys stay tuned, I will try to post as much as I can but I do have a full-time job so please bear with me. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy it!