Hospitals have a way of making everything feel colder than it is.
The lights were too bright. The air was too sharp. The silence was too loud. Alex sat in the emergency waiting room with his fists clenched and head bowed low, his heart was drummed with every heartbeat, too loud for the quiet room.
His shirt was stained with sweat. Blood from his father's nose dried on his sleeves. The nurses had taken his father in, wheeled him down cold white corridors, spoken in clinical tones that made Alex want to scream.
They asked questions: When did he collapse? What did he eat? Any known conditions? Medications? Medical history?
Alex had no answers. His mind was still stuck on that moment, walking into the house, the smile on his face, the plans in his head… and then everything freezing.
The heavy footsteps broke his spiral.
That morning, everything had felt… possible.
He had left the house rehearsing what he'd say. "Dad, I got it. I actually got it."
He'd imagined his father's face lighting up, that rare, full smile that made him look ten years younger.
But life didn't follow scripts. The door he'd opened that afternoon led not to celebration, but to collapse.
"Alex!"
He looked up. Emma, his little sister, rushed in with a hoodie thrown over her uniform, breathing fast. Behind her came Sarah, steady, serious, always composed, yet today her eyes were wide with panic.
"Where is he?" Sarah asked. "What happened?"
"I—I don't know. I found him on the floor. I thought he was just…"
He couldn't finish. Emma sat beside him, trembling. Sarah put a hand on her shoulder and then looked at Alex.
"Is he alive?"
Alex couldn't speak. He looked down.
That was enough of an answer.
A part of him whispered You should've been here.
He had been out chasing a future, believing there would always be time. Believing that his father, strong and stubborn, would always wait for him. But life didn't wait. Death didn't wait.
"If I had come home just ten minutes earlier…"
The thought of everything was just so painful.
The door to the hallway opened, and a doctor stepped out. His eyes were heavy, his face unreadable. Alex stood immediately, Sarah too. Emma followed, slowly.
The man sighed. "You're his children?"
"Yes," Alex replied, his voice already breaking. That's the only word that could come out of his mouth; he couldn't talk about Sarah.
The doctor folded his arms while hesitating. Then he said the words that would echo in Alex's mind for weeks.
"I'm sorry. We did all we could… but he was already gone when he arrived. Heart failure. It was quick."
The doctor didn't meet their eyes at first. His voice, though it was calm, carried the tired weight of too many losses. He looked like he wanted to say more, but couldn't find the words that would make any of it easier.
Alex stared at him, trying to read something else in his face. A pause. A "but." A miracle. Anything.
Nothing came.
The doctor gave a brief, almost apologetic nod, then added, "He didn't suffer. It happened quickly."
Like that made it better. Like that erased the silence he would now carry for the rest of his life.
"We'll give you some time," the doctor said quietly, before disappearing down the corridor
Silence.
No one cried at first. It was too sudden for that. It didn't feel real. Sarah closed her eyes slowly. Emma broke the silence.
"No..."
She whispered it like a prayer, then said it louder. "No."
Alex felt his knees weaken. He dropped into the nearest chair and buried his face in his palms.
Everything blurred. Not like in the movies, with sounds and dramatic slow motion, but in that awful, awful clarity where time doesn't move, yet every second stings.
He squeezed his eyes shut, but the weight of what had just happened didn't disappear.
His chest burned. Not from panic, but from shame.
"I was out celebrating. Smiling. Thinking today was the best day of my life. And all that time, he was here. Alone. Dying."
A part of him wanted to scream. Another part wanted to rewind everything. But all he could do was sit there, silent, broken, and haunted by a time that no longer existed.
It wasn't supposed to be like this.
Not today. Not after everything.
For a moment, they were just three broken souls under white hospital lights.
Emma's cries worsened.
Later that night, Alex couldn't sleep.
He lay on the floor of his father's bedroom, surrounded by the scent of old cologne and worn books. Every sound in the house was loud. The ticking of the old wall clock. The creaking of wood. The occasional coughing from Emma's room.
He stared at the ceiling and remembered.
Alex remembered being seven, curling up beside the chair with a blanket wrapped around his tiny shoulders. His father would reach down and tousle his hair, then start reading from a storybook with a voice that was so steady that it felt like the walls listened.
It wasn't just the words, it was the pauses, the little hums he made, the warmth in his tone. His father didn't just read. He performed. His voice could soften the monsters under the bed, could stretch wide enough to carry Alex to distant lands where the sun never set.
Sometimes, the stories were real, his father's childhood in the village, tales of fishing with his grandfather, of climbing trees so high you could see the town vanish behind the clouds. Alex had memorized everyone, even when he pretended to fall asleep halfway through.
On stormy nights, when the thunder shook the windows, John would light a small lamp and say, "The sky's just angry because it lost a game of chess." And Alex would laugh, even when he was scared.
Now, the lamp was cold. The armchair was empty.
And the storyteller was gone.
Alex rolled onto his side and buried his face on the floor. The room still smelled like him, cologne, paper, old wood, and something else he couldn't name. A presence. A weight. A warmth that lingered even in death.
He didn't cry loudly. He just lay there, silent tears soaking into the fibers of the rug, wishing more than anything for one last story.
Grief is greedy. It doesn't stop at one loss.
As Alex lay there, eyes burning, the silence opened another door, one he hadn't walked through in years.
Because before there was the pain of losing his father, there had been another ache.
Older. Deeper.
Another voice, another absence, that time had tried to bury but never erased.
He was eleven.
The morning had started like any other. Except something was off.
His mother's suitcase was at the door.
He remembered his father's voice, pleading, desperate. "Martha, please. Think of the kids. Just stay a little longer. We can fix this."
His mother was crying, but her eyes were resolute. "I can't, John. I've been drowning here. I can't breathe anymore."
Alex, small and confused, had stood in the corner of the room, tears in his eyes. Emma was just a baby then, in her crib, unaware that the world was fracturing around her.
"Mum…" he had whispered.
She didn't even look back at first. But just before she closed the door, she turned. Her eyes met his. And then she was gone.
The door clicked.
That sound haunted him ever since.
Now, fifteen years later, his father had followed that silence.
Alex sat up and wiped his face.
His phone buzzed beside him, messages from the company.
"You missed your first day. You were expected. This is a serious breach."
"We regret to inform you..."
He didn't read the rest. He dropped the phone on the floor like it was poison.
He had lost it.
The job.
The one thing that was supposed to change everything. He lost it, and along with it, whatever hope he had carried into that interview room.
And maybe that's what hurt most.
The job wasn't just a job. It was a way out. A new start. A chance to be something more than the boy left behind by his mother, then by his dreams.
He wanted to show his father that he had made it.
But now there was no one left to see.