My Professor's Secret

31|

thirty-one

[trigger warning: talk of suicide]

The receptionist directs us to the Intensive Care Unit once we provide information about our father, then turns her attention back to the computer in front of her.

"What happened to him? Is he okay?" Chris asks immediately.

"Unfortunately, I can't give you that information," she replies, her tone practiced enough to make it clear she's said those words hundreds of times before. "Once you get to the ICU, they'll explain everything they can."

And just like that, we're dismissed. I don't blame her for it. She's doing her job. Still, something is unsettling about how easily devastating news becomes routine for people in places like this.

I try to hold myself together better than I did the last time I was in this hospital, but the closer we get to the elevators, the tighter my chest becomes. The fluorescent lights overhead begin to blur together.

"Alex?"

Trinity's voice reaches me from somewhere too far away. My breathing turns shallow before I even realize it's happening. The room tilts subtly beneath my feet, my body suddenly feeling disconnected from itself.

"Hey," Trinity says again, stepping closer. "Breathe."

I force air into my lungs, but it catches halfway down.

"We don't know what's going on yet," she says carefully. "Okay? We don't know anything."

But that's the problem. My mind keeps trying to fill in the blanks anyway. Dead. Dying. Cancer. Machines. Funeral flowers. Mom.

The thought hits so hard it nearly folds me in half. Losing one parent nearly destroyed me. I don't think I could survive another.

By the time we make it to the ICU waiting room, my legs feel unsteady beneath me. Lorelei is hunched forward in one of the chairs when we walk in. Her blouse is stained red. So are her hands.

For a second, none of us moves.

"Mom?" Trinity says quietly. "What happened?"

Lorelei looks up, and the expression on her face terrifies me more than the blood does. She looks hollow. Like whatever happened tonight already took something out of her, too.

"Your brother went to get me a change of clothes," she says weakly. "There was so much blood, Trin."

The words hollow me out instantly.

Before I can stop it, tears spill down my cheeks as I collapse into the chair beside her, my body finally giving out beneath the weight of it all.

None of us knows what to say after that.

The waiting room settles into a suffocating silence, broken only by the distant beeping of machines and the muted television mounted in the corner. Some renovation show plays across the screen, bright and cheerful in a way that feels almost cruel considering where we are.

Lorelei stares ahead without really looking at anything. The blood on her blouse has already started to dry in places.

Trinity eventually sits beside her, rubbing slow circles across her back, but even that seems useless against whatever shock has settled over the room.