Chapter Two

REAL WORLD - TEN YEARS AGO

I was trying my best not to panic.

But, how could I not? He was my dad, after all. My father, lying there lifeless on a steely bed that still smelled nothing but, plastics.

I stood there, frozen at that moment, my hands clenched into useless fists, eyes glued to the sight of him lying still. He looked like a stranger. Pale. Cold. Finished.

I had to relearn on how to breathe for the next quick seconds. Breathe in, breathe out. Exhale, Inhale.

Even though I spent most of my life hating him, blaming him for the way everything broke around us, nothing prepared me for this. I had rehearsed this moment before in nightmares, after our last fight. I thought I’d feel relief or nothing at all. But all I felt was sick. Empty. Terrified.

And so fucking alone.

The silence in the lab felt obscene. This was supposed to be a place of discovery, of breakthroughs. This was the only place that he ever felt alive and human to me Instead, it was a tomb. Was he really dead?

I didn’t even know who to call and ask for help? Who do you call when your estranged father, the man you both feared and craved approval from, collapses at the center of your shared history and leaves you holding the weight of it all?

I took almost half an hour combing through his call book, a wrinkled thing with no names, just numbers. No emergency contacts. No family. Not even friends he chose over us. Over me!.

Turns out it wasn’t just me he isolated. That realization came like a cracked mirror... shocking, splintered, and oddly comforting. I wasn’t the only one who didn’t exist in his world. But still, I was the one standing over his body, too afraid to touch him, too numb to cry.

Then the machine buzzed.

It was his lab phone, buried deep in his coat pocket. I hesitated, then grabbed it with a shaking hand and answered.

"Dr. Dad... I mean, my dad is cold and not moving!" I screamed. My voice cracked like glass.

Silence.

Deafening silence that made my heart race faster than it already was. I stared at his motionless chest, my mouth dry. Was that it? Was our fight going to be the last thing we did together? How sad was that?

"Hello?" I asked again, this time softer, desperate.

"Oh… hello there," said a voice on the line. Male. Calm. Maybe too calm for my comfort.

"Yes, I'm here. Hello! I need help at our south quarter wing!" I shouted, my voice rising again as I took a few cautious steps back toward the bed to check in on Dad. Just to be sure.

"You sound awfully young to be his lab partner," he said casually on the line.

What the hell? Was that what was important here? I thought to myself.

"Please, send help!" I snapped, my voice venomous with panic. I stared into the ceiling as if my glare could travel through signals and strangle him.

The man chuckled. A soft, warm laugh, like I was some amusing child playing pretend.

"Don’t worry, child," he said, almost kindly. "The doctors are already outside your wing. Why don’t you open the door for them?"

I didn’t wait. My legs carried me to the door like they had minds of their own. Hope flickered or maybe it was a fire burning in my lungs as I ran to the door.

But the people outside weren’t doctors.

There were six of them, maybe more. Clad in black uniforms with masks over their heads, like security. Not one of them had a stethoscope or a friendly stance.

I turned to look at the phone and returned it to my ear but before I could ask the man on the call, I felt a cold object on my forehead before seeing the extended hand holding it there.

The man was standing in front of me now, no longer just a voice.

"I’m sorry to intrude, child," he said, smiling. That same soft, now that I'm certain it was just a fake warmth dripping from his lips. "But I may need some directions to the lab. Care to help?"

And that was when I knew.

Knew I had been played. That I walked right into it.

Knew that I had just become the one thing my dad always said I was growing up to be.

Just a stupid girl.

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