On a bitter, gray morning, I drove my stepdad to the ER after he collapsed at home with a hand pressed hard against his chest. He kept insisting he was “fine,” waving me off between shallow breaths, but the sweat rolling down his temples told the truth he didn’t want to face. I didn’t waste time arguing. I got him in the car, kept talking to him so he wouldn’t drift, and stayed by his side while nurses attached monitors with practiced speed. His daughter lived hours away; she said she’d try to come, but life has a way of making distance feel even wider in moments like that. I told her I’d stay with him. I meant it.
For days, I lived in that hospital room—dozing in a stiff chair, clutching styrofoam cups of lukewarm coffee, listening to the steady rhythm of machines that felt like a thin line between life and loss. He drifted in and out of sleep, cracking jokes sometimes, squeezing my hand other times when the pain grew sharp. He never said he was scared, but it was there in the flicker of his eyes each time a doctor hesitated before speaking. I tried to steady him, not out of obligation, but because he had given me years of quiet stability—simple support that mattered more than either of us ever put into words. We weren’t bound by blood, but sometimes the heart adopts people long before the law ever could.
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