I almost didn't recognize him.
For a few seconds, I was sure that I was in the wrong room, because the man in the hospital bed wasn't my Dad. He looked like Dad, but he wasn't. My Dad was younger, healthier, stronger than this stranger. Dad didn't have all that gray hair, and he didn't have that many lines on his face.
The longer I stared, the more details I recognized on the stranger's face. A scar that bisected his left eyebrow from when he'd tried to fix the water heater. Smile lines etched deep around his mouth. The permanent freckle he had under one eye.
The final piece of the puzzle was the line across his forehead. It was like a warning sign; when he got mad, it appeared. I saw that single line and everything fell into place.
"Oh Dad... What happened?" I whispered.
Kurt and Lacey rushed through me to be at his bedside. I stayed where I was. I wanted to go closer, but my legs weren't listening.
Seeing him- understanding that my Dad was in the hospital knocked the wind out of me. It was like I'd gotten sucker punched by my own feelings. Not just the guilt and shame I felt for not being there for him, but also fear.
Hospitals had always made me feel that fear. Even if it was just visiting one of Dad's friends or coworkers, I ended up standing in the back, too nervous to talk to anyone. They weren't pleasant places to begin with, but what really bothered me about them was that I knew people died in hospitals. If someone went to the hospital, they could die.
It was a child's logic, but it still got to me.
If Dad was in the hospital, he could die. And seeing him there, asleep in the hospital bed, he seemed fragile; not only more vulnerable than before, but more mortal.
Dad might die. Not in the 'everyone dies eventually' way, but possibly here and now.
Slowly, I moved to stand beside Kurt and Lacey. Lacey had her arms wrapped around herself, like she didn't know what to do with them.
"Oh Dan," she whispered. "Oh Dan, how could you?"
Kurt reached out to her and pulled her to his side. "It'll be okay. He'll be okay, Lace."
Lacey's expression said that she didn't believe him. She was about to reply when the door opened.
A man entered. He was sort of reedy, with a thin beard and a labcoat. His nametag read 'McCormick.' He was younger than I'd expected a doctor to be, probably no more than his late 20s.
Kurt and Lacey turned toward him, but stayed close to the bed.
"Hi, I'm Dr. McCormick." He said, smiling. "You are…?"
"Friends of his." Kurt said.
"Is Dan going to be okay?" Lacey cut in.
McCormick grew sober. He flipped through some of the pages on his clipboard, while looking at Dad's chart.
"Mr. Hebert is stable at the moment. The paramedics on the scene were able to get him breathing and pump the water out of his lungs. We've got him on an antibiotic regimen in case pneumonia develops, but if we're lucky, Panacea will drop by to see him tonight."
"Panacea might come?" Kurt said, his eyes widening.
McCormick gave a small shrug. "Possibly. She's extremely busy, but today is one of the days she comes to our hospital. If she doesn't, we've got Mr. Hebert scheduled for an MRI tomorrow morning."
"Why?" Lacey said.
"According to the paramedics, he was underwater for several minutes. It's very possible that he'll have some degree of brain damage."
My knees hit the floor.
Dad. With brain damage. He could live through this, but mentally? The man who was my father might be gone forever; dead in all but name.
Kurt swallowed heavily before he spoke. "Do you… do you know any more? Will he wake up at least?"
"I can't say." McCormick said. "We won't know until we get him in for an MRI. If you'd like to stick around for a while, I could see if Panacea will diagnose him. She'll probably be able to tell you."
What right did he have to be so calm when Dad might be dying? Smug bastard. He probably didn't even know Dad's name until he checked the chart.
"There's a lounge on down the hall if you'd like to wait." McCormick said. "I'll call you if anything changes."
Kurt nodded. "Alright. Lace, you want to stay, or you want to go down there?"
Lacey looked between Kurt and Dad before sniffling quietly. "Let's go wait. I- if- seeing him like this is too…" She sniffed harder.
More than ever, I wished I could give her a hug. She felt the same way I did. She knew just how much trouble Dad was in.
McCormick escorted Kurt and Lacey out of the room. As the door swung closed, I saw Kurt looking back at Dad, his expression grim.
There was a chair sitting in the corner. I called Allfather into being. He felt too big for the room; out of place in somewhere as prosaic as the hospital.
"Can you move that, please?" I said.
"Taylor, are you alright?"
I didn't answer. I just looked meaningfully at the chair. Allfather seemed to understand after a moment. He dragged the chair to Dad's bedside.
"I'm here if you need me." He said.
"I know. I have to do this on my own."
I let him vanish, leaving me alone with Dad.
Dad hadn't stirred so far. Not for Kurt and Lacey, and not even for Allfather moving furniture. I didn't have any expectation of him hearing me. He was asleep, and I was some weird superpower ghost. We might as well have been on different continents.
I took the chair, pulling my knees to my chest and curling up on it. I needed to tell Dad some things. Just in case I never got the chance to tell him for real.
"Two years ago, Emma and I stopped being friends."
Something constricted inside me, but I kept going.
"She'd made friends with a girl named Sophia, and she… I don't know what happened to her. She changed."
There was more to it than that. Emma had- and it still hurt me to think of it; Emma had betrayed me. Sold me out to her new best friend for fun. Every secret told in confidence, all my hopes and dreams, every last scrap of our friendship had just been more ammunition for her little crusade.
And the worst part- the absolute worst part of it was that some small part of me still held out hope that Emma would be my friend again. That she'd change her tune, apologize for all the things she'd done and all would be right with the world.
"… but I can't feel that way anymore." I told Dad. The room was quiet, with only my words to carry over the sound of Dad's heart monitor. I took a deep breath, balling my hands up in my shirt.
"Because Emma put me in the locker. She and Sophia and Madison did. As a joke! They put me in that fu-" I took a deep breath, forcing myself not to shout.
"I don't- I can't tell you what it was like in there."
I didn't have the words to tell Dad what the locker was like. I could tell him that "they laughed," but it didn't do it justice. Two simple words couldn't describe what it was like to know that someone- to know that your friend wanted to hurt you. That she thought it was funny to hurt you. How the sound ringing in my ears when I woke wasn't the sound of things festering in the locker, but Emma's high, mocking laughter.
It was a long while before I could talk to Dad again. I forced myself to go on. I'd spent so long not talking to him, and here was the end result. I was dead, and he might be as well.
"How long was I in there?" I asked. "It seemed like… it seemed like days. They told you about it, right?"
The rhythmic beep-beep of the heart monitor was my only answer.
"They didn't care." I said softly. "No one cared enough to let me out. Not a single person cared if I died in there."
Beep-beep.
"But… I'm back now." One of Dad's hands was resting atop the covers. I reached for it without thinking. My fingers passed through his, but I kept my hand there, trying to remember how he felt.
"I'm back now, and I'm going to help you. I'll help you get better, and then I'll deal with the trio."
Beep-beep.
My words faded into the room's quiet. Dad's chest slowly rose and fell, his breath rasping in his throat.
Even asleep, he looked weary. It was a familiar expression. One I'd seen in my own face, day in-day out, for months. And before that, we'd both worn it when Mom died.
It was so familiar to me at this point that I could see clearly what had happened. My death had been the final straw for Dad. He'd broken, just like I had broken. Just given up on everything. There was no way for me to survive the locker. Even if I'd lived through it, there would have been no way to keep going.
I knew exactly how he felt. Knew exactly how bad he must have been hurting to do what he did.
"Dad… I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Sorry wasn't good enough. If I'd just done something different; done better- Dad might not be here.
"This is all my fault, Dad."
There was nothing I could do to help him. So I sat, holding his hand as best I could, and waited for Panacea.