Back With Baby, Ex Regrets Deeply novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: The Hospital

My father looked smaller in a hospital bed than I'd ever thought a person could look.

He had a tube in the back of his hand and wires on his chest under the gown, and the machine beside him counted his heart in green.

His silver hair was flat on one side from the pillow.

He was awake.

He saw me in the doorway and tried to sit up, and the machine complained.

"Don't," I said. "Lie down."

He lay down.

I stayed in the doorway.

Alistair was down the corridor on a plastic chair with his coat over his knees, where I'd asked him to be.

Close enough. Not in the room.

"You came," my father said.

"They said you kept asking."

"I did." He wet his lips. "I didn't think they'd actually call."

I came in and stood at the foot of the bed.

I didn't sit.

There was a get-well card on the tray table, a cheap one with a tugboat on it.

Somebody had written inside in big blocky capitals, and about forty men had signed under it.

"The crews?"

"The captain brought it this morning." He looked at it. "I'd been going down the list. Like you said. Person by person. I did the board Monday. The bank Tuesday. Your mother's friend Wednesday, the one who does the watercolors. She threw a cup of tea at me."

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