I stood in the waiting room under fluorescent lights that made everyone look exhausted and guilty. Nurses moved quickly behind the double doors. Somewhere down the hall, a child cried. Somewhere in the room behind me, a television murmured about traffic and weather. It all sounded very far away.
Inside my chest, there was only that frozen thing. Not panic. Not grief. Not even rage anymore.
Mission focus.
A doctor in blue scrubs approached me with measured steps. She was young, calm, efficient. The kind of person who spent her days standing in the eye of other people’s disasters.
“You’re Mia’s father?”
“Yes.”
“She’s responding to treatment. Her oxygen saturation is climbing, but it was dangerously low when she arrived. Another ten minutes in that environment and this could have gone a very different direction.”
The words landed with surgical precision.
I nodded once.
“She has a severe asthma attack, significant dust exposure, and we are concerned about mold inhalation,” the doctor continued. “We’ve started bronchodilators and steroids. We’re monitoring for secondary complications. She’s asking for you.”
My body moved before my mind did. I followed the doctor through the corridor, past curtained rooms and carts loaded with supplies, until I reached a small treatment bay.
Mia looked impossibly tiny in the hospital bed.
A clear plastic mask covered her nose and mouth. Her dark curls were damp with sweat. Her favorite yellow cardigan had been cut off in the trauma room and replaced with a thin hospital gown. Her little hand rested on the blanket, palm up, searching.
“Daddy?” she whispered when she saw me.
I took her hand carefully.
“I’m here, sweetheart.”
Her eyes were red from crying. They were still the same soft brown as Claire’s, but now they held something they should never have had to hold.
Fear.
