Page 32 of No One But Me
Always catching him.
Always too late.
Footsteps thundered in the hallway. The door burst open. Nurses flooded in—professional, efficient, already moving with practiced urgency. Someone pulled me back. Someone else dropped beside him. Voices overlapped. Medical jargon I couldn't parse through the roaring in my ears.
I pressed against the wall. Watched them work. Watched my father's chest rise and fall in those terrible, shallow gasps.
Not again.
Please, not again.
But the prayer felt hollow.
Because again was already happening.
And I was just a daughter against a wall, useless and terrified, watching the only family she had left slip away on a hospital floor.
The doctor this time didn't soften it.
Dr. Lahiri—sharp-eyed, silver-haired, exhausted in the way people got when they stopped pretending—sat across from me in the hallway. No bedside manner. No comforting platitudes.
Just facts.
"Your father's condition is stress-triggered," she said. "Each episode compounds the damage. His heart cannot sustain this pattern."
I sat very still. Hands clasped in my lap to hide the shaking.
"What does that mean?"
"It means he cannot keep living like this." She pulled off her glasses. Rubbed the bridge of her nose. "High stress accelerates deterioration. He needs monitoring. Lifestyle changes. Potentially surgical intervention depending on the next cardiac workup."
The words washed over me. Clinical. Detached.
Cannot keep living like this.
"So we manage his stress," I said. "Make changes. I can?—"
"Ms. Reiss." She put the glasses back on. Met my eyes. "The lifestyle changes your father requires aren't just emotional. They're financial."
My stomach dropped.
"Insurance will cover this hospitalization," she continued. "But extended care—monitoring equipment, specialist consultations, the medications he'll need long-term—that falls outside your current plan's scope."
The hallway tilted slightly.
"How far outside?"
She hesitated.
Then named a number.
Six figures.
I heard it. Understood the syllables. But my brain refused to process them into meaning. Like she'd spoken another language entirely.
"That's..." My voice came out thin. "That can't be right."
"I'm sorry."
