He was unaware of how loud the tapping of his dress-shoe clad toes was against the polished tile floor. The woman sat diagonally across from him glared daggers that stabbed his restless left foot from over the top of her cooking magazine, but he was too numb with shock to feel it. It slapped the yellow square at an uneven pace, making terrible music that was silent in his ears, but deafening to the ears of the people around him. An elderly man in the corner shared a staring contest with the tapping toes, losing to his unseeing competitor when the receptionist cleared her throat and called out a gentle, “Sir,” to which the owner of the musical dress shoe looked up and froze. “I understand you’re feeling a lot of stress right now, but could you please stay quiet, so the people around you can feel at peace?”
“Right, sorry,” he muttered, mentally noting that he was not at all sorry, and crossed his tapping leg over his other, shaking his foot silently instead. He glued his eyes to the double doors at the mouth of the hallway, squinting in an attempt to see through the tiny windows, so miniscule and tinted that they were basically useless. Still, he kept searching what he could see of the scene on the other side of the barriers, as if he would be able to see his former wife and daughter in the swarm of doctors, nurses, and trauma patients. He knew that they were probably being tended to in that very moment, meaning they would no longer be sitting out in that stupid, cramped hallway where too many sick and injured lie people on gurneys, waiting to be taken care of or diagnosed, so they could go home and lie in their bedroom as opposed to a sterile hospital room with walls so blindingly white that you end up with a splitting headache on top of the reason you came here in the first place. He prayed that they were in a waiting room by now, maybe even signing release papers.
A memory appearing in his brain of his wife’s signature scrawled meticulously over a line beginning with an ‘x’ brought up the familiar image of the papers they had both signed six months prior, more distinctly the one she signed afterward.
His hand haphazardly squirmed on the paper, the pen in his hand creating an illegible signature, so much that even he, himself, couldn’t recognize it as his name. That was the last step in signing his daughter off. The lawyer took the pen from him and handed it to Sara, where she wrote her name with so much caution that it made John want to fall in love with her all over again, the pen barely grazing the page while managing to leave a perfect trail of ink. She traded the lawyer the packet of divorce papers for a new packet, one that John refused to look at. The restraining order. She demanded a restraining order against the man who got her pregnant when she wasn’t ready, the man she was forced to marry. Even though the sound of the ballpoint pen against the soft, white paper shattered his heart, he did not stop her. He loved her, and he just wanted her to be happy.
Earlier that day, he had been sitting at his desk, the humdrum work atmosphere having no distractions to offer his mind, busy with excessive thinking of what could have been. He was excited when the phone on his desk rang, partially hoping he would hear Sara’s voice on the other end of the line, more so hoping it was anyone but her to ease his exhausted mind. When Sara’s mother greeted him by informing him that his daughter was currently in an ambulance with his former wife, he hung up and rushed to the local emergency room, only to sit there and stare at the doors with drooping eyes. He arrived nine hours ago, and no one had updated him since he did.
Watching the lockscreen of his phone, he counted out sixty seconds each time the last number on the digital clock changed. Each time, he would have to count to sixty an average of two and a half times before it would change, as if time was moving in slow motion. The first time he had sat in that very room with this much anxiety was seven years ago, the day his daughter, Zoe, was born.
He had been visiting his mother the day the mother carrying his child went into labor. Sara’s mother called him to let him know that he needed to get to the hospital immediately, but upon arriving just over thirty minutes later, he learned that Sara had made a specific request to the nurses to not to allow him into the room. “So I can’t go in to see her?” His voice was weak and helpless. Why would she bother forcing him to miss the birth of his first child? Sure, it was only going to be his child for a few minutes before they gave her to the couple who was expecting to take her home with them, but that baby was partially his DNA. Time slowed until it was going in reverse. His foot slapped the yellow tiles impatiently, as he watched the ticking clock on the wall.
When he finally met his and Sara’s child, four painful hours later (for both of them), Sara dropped the bomb that they were not putting her up for adoption and that she had already informed the couple that was expecting their baby. Her mother made this decision, claiming that she would be heartbroken if they gave away her first granddaughter. John was not disappointed by this, but instead he was holding back from leaping over her bed with joy.
Two weeks passed, and he proposed to Sara, telling her, “We might as well do this together, if not for the sake of us, then for the sake of our daughter,” the word daughter leaving an oddly sweet taste when it rolled off his tongue. Sara’s mother thought it was a smart idea, answering affirmative without her daughter’s consent. Sara agreed, adding that she had to break up with her boyfriend at that time in a bitter tone. Her voice still echoed through his brain to this day. “Yeah, but then what am I going to do about Aaron? Just leave him and say that I’m stuck marrying some other guy, so I can care for his baby? That’s horrible, mom! You were the one who wanted the kid, not me! He’ll be heartbroken.”
Her words left John heartbroken.
The idea that she was never happy with John stung, the divorce only coming into light with the revelation of her infidelity during their marriage. John was the one who filed. He took a week off of work and lived with his mother, too heartbroken to care about acting like a pathetic loser. He should have suspected it sooner.
He watched another hour pass on the clock of his phone, then another and another, staring numbly at the numbers as the people around him came and went. Every so often, he would grow tired of looking at the clock, and he would look at the photos on his phone instead. His favorite one was of Zoe from two years ago. She was in a box with rainbow scribbles on the side of it, her little face peeking over the top of it. He liked how her eyes were crinkled at the corners, remembering how happy she was that day.
“I got it!” John cheered, after snapping the picture of his daughter.
“No you didn’t!” she insisted, high-pitched giggles bubbling out of her, as she stood up in her box. To her, it wasn’t just a box; it was her rainbow submarine that she and her dad were going to take to go camping at the bottom of the ocean.
“Yes, I did!” he laughed, crawling in the box beside her. She plopped down on his knee, looking at the phone screen, giggling like a madman still. One of her pigtails whacked John in the face, as she turned her head to look at him, causing more laughter from both of them. “I told you, but you wouldn’t believe me!” She placed a finger over his lips, shushing him. Gently, he pulled her hand away, observing the pink polish that was chipping off of her nails. “We need to repaint these soon. Maybe we should paint them blue next time, yeah?”
Zoe shook her head, telling him, “Blue is a boy color.”
“Okay then,” he chuckled, “how about yellow? Like the sunshine?”
Hesitantly, she nodded, her pigtails bouncing as she did so. “I like the sunshine.”
He set his phone aside again, trying to keep his eyes from drooping. He wiggled around in the uncomfortable chair, drifting in and out of consciousness, until it was seven in the morning and he needed to step out of the room to call in sick for work. Upon returning, he approached the woman at the desk, a different one than the lady who reprimanded him earlier, causing her to look up with a solemn smile. “How can I help you, sir?”
“My daughter,” he croaked out with a hoarse voice, “was brought here yesterday morning around ten a.m. from Greenview Elementary in an ambulance. Her name is Zoe Dawson, and I still haven’t been updated about her condition.”
The woman nodded and turn around, looking through shelves of binders, pulling out a dusty rose colored one and setting it on the desk. She sat in front of John again, flipping through the pages. “She is in our intensive care unit,” she informed him, looking back at John with hooded eyes. “Her present guardian is her mother, Sara Ellis. She fell off of the third-floor balcony, overlooking the first floor, and broke her neck and spine. Sara has requested that John Dawson not be allowed access into the ICU, claiming it would conflict with a restraining order. Is that you?”
Tears rushed down down his cheeks, as he nodded slowly, looking down at the floor. “She has a history of not allowing me in her life,” John choked out.
She continued, after a pause, her voice quieter this time, due to the realization that she should not be sharing this information with him. “She’s been diagnosed with quadriplegia; she’s paralyzed from the neck down. This will most likely be permanent, but Dr. Anderson, our head of neurosurgery, is currently working with Dr. Foster, our head of pediatric surgery, to the best of their abilities. She’ll be kept here for at least a few days, if not a few weeks.”
Unable to process the heavy load of new information, he stared at the open binder on the desk, his eyes scanning his daughter’s name over and over again. That couldn’t possibly be his Zoe. Zoe Dawson. It couldn’t be her, yet it was. Quadriplegic. His daughter. “And I can’t go in to see her?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I think you should go home and rest.”
Without another word, he spun on his heel, and exited through the automatic doors. Feeling all emotions at once and nothing at all at the same time, he marched to his small, tan car, unlocking the door and sliding in with ease, slamming it behind him.
His keys were in his hand, hovering in front of the ignition, but he couldn’t bring himself to start the engine. His hand fell open, letting the keys fall to the rubber mat on the floor. He slumped in the seat, his eyes falling closed and his tears drying to his face, making his skin feel sticky.
He realized, in that moment, that he no longer loved Sara - he couldn’t find it in him to still love her after this. He was furious with her for leading him on, cheating on him, and signing that damned restraining order that prohibited him from seeing the little girl that he gave to her, but ever more so, he found he was furious with himself for waiting for her to return, thinking that he loved her for all of this time.
So, he left.
Inside of the hospital, unbeknownst to John, his phone rang on the desk of the secretary. Had he answered, he would’ve heard Sara’s voice; he would’ve seen Zoe. He would have gone back to his ex-wife with salty tears pooling in his eyes, as he confessed to her how much he missed her. He would’ve been the one to take care of Zoe those following, torturous years, while Sara partied and went out with other guys and drank until she forgot she even had a daughter.
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he rolled out of the parking lot, as the sun peeked over the roof of the hospital, and drove as far away from that disgustingly unlucky building as possible, oblivious to the voicemail left for him, beseeching him to turn around.
“Right, sorry,” he muttered, mentally noting that he was not at all sorry, and crossed his tapping leg over his other, shaking his foot silently instead. He glued his eyes to the double doors at the mouth of the hallway, squinting in an attempt to see through the tiny windows, so miniscule and tinted that they were basically useless. Still, he kept searching what he could see of the scene on the other side of the barriers, as if he would be able to see his former wife and daughter in the swarm of doctors, nurses, and trauma patients. He knew that they were probably being tended to in that very moment, meaning they would no longer be sitting out in that stupid, cramped hallway where too many sick and injured lie people on gurneys, waiting to be taken care of or diagnosed, so they could go home and lie in their bedroom as opposed to a sterile hospital room with walls so blindingly white that you end up with a splitting headache on top of the reason you came here in the first place. He prayed that they were in a waiting room by now, maybe even signing release papers.
A memory appearing in his brain of his wife’s signature scrawled meticulously over a line beginning with an ‘x’ brought up the familiar image of the papers they had both signed six months prior, more distinctly the one she signed afterward.
His hand haphazardly squirmed on the paper, the pen in his hand creating an illegible signature, so much that even he, himself, couldn’t recognize it as his name. That was the last step in signing his daughter off. The lawyer took the pen from him and handed it to Sara, where she wrote her name with so much caution that it made John want to fall in love with her all over again, the pen barely grazing the page while managing to leave a perfect trail of ink. She traded the lawyer the packet of divorce papers for a new packet, one that John refused to look at. The restraining order. She demanded a restraining order against the man who got her pregnant when she wasn’t ready, the man she was forced to marry. Even though the sound of the ballpoint pen against the soft, white paper shattered his heart, he did not stop her. He loved her, and he just wanted her to be happy.
Earlier that day, he had been sitting at his desk, the humdrum work atmosphere having no distractions to offer his mind, busy with excessive thinking of what could have been. He was excited when the phone on his desk rang, partially hoping he would hear Sara’s voice on the other end of the line, more so hoping it was anyone but her to ease his exhausted mind. When Sara’s mother greeted him by informing him that his daughter was currently in an ambulance with his former wife, he hung up and rushed to the local emergency room, only to sit there and stare at the doors with drooping eyes. He arrived nine hours ago, and no one had updated him since he did.
Watching the lockscreen of his phone, he counted out sixty seconds each time the last number on the digital clock changed. Each time, he would have to count to sixty an average of two and a half times before it would change, as if time was moving in slow motion. The first time he had sat in that very room with this much anxiety was seven years ago, the day his daughter, Zoe, was born.
He had been visiting his mother the day the mother carrying his child went into labor. Sara’s mother called him to let him know that he needed to get to the hospital immediately, but upon arriving just over thirty minutes later, he learned that Sara had made a specific request to the nurses to not to allow him into the room. “So I can’t go in to see her?” His voice was weak and helpless. Why would she bother forcing him to miss the birth of his first child? Sure, it was only going to be his child for a few minutes before they gave her to the couple who was expecting to take her home with them, but that baby was partially his DNA. Time slowed until it was going in reverse. His foot slapped the yellow tiles impatiently, as he watched the ticking clock on the wall.
When he finally met his and Sara’s child, four painful hours later (for both of them), Sara dropped the bomb that they were not putting her up for adoption and that she had already informed the couple that was expecting their baby. Her mother made this decision, claiming that she would be heartbroken if they gave away her first granddaughter. John was not disappointed by this, but instead he was holding back from leaping over her bed with joy.
Two weeks passed, and he proposed to Sara, telling her, “We might as well do this together, if not for the sake of us, then for the sake of our daughter,” the word daughter leaving an oddly sweet taste when it rolled off his tongue. Sara’s mother thought it was a smart idea, answering affirmative without her daughter’s consent. Sara agreed, adding that she had to break up with her boyfriend at that time in a bitter tone. Her voice still echoed through his brain to this day. “Yeah, but then what am I going to do about Aaron? Just leave him and say that I’m stuck marrying some other guy, so I can care for his baby? That’s horrible, mom! You were the one who wanted the kid, not me! He’ll be heartbroken.”
Her words left John heartbroken.
The idea that she was never happy with John stung, the divorce only coming into light with the revelation of her infidelity during their marriage. John was the one who filed. He took a week off of work and lived with his mother, too heartbroken to care about acting like a pathetic loser. He should have suspected it sooner.
He watched another hour pass on the clock of his phone, then another and another, staring numbly at the numbers as the people around him came and went. Every so often, he would grow tired of looking at the clock, and he would look at the photos on his phone instead. His favorite one was of Zoe from two years ago. She was in a box with rainbow scribbles on the side of it, her little face peeking over the top of it. He liked how her eyes were crinkled at the corners, remembering how happy she was that day.
“I got it!” John cheered, after snapping the picture of his daughter.
“No you didn’t!” she insisted, high-pitched giggles bubbling out of her, as she stood up in her box. To her, it wasn’t just a box; it was her rainbow submarine that she and her dad were going to take to go camping at the bottom of the ocean.
“Yes, I did!” he laughed, crawling in the box beside her. She plopped down on his knee, looking at the phone screen, giggling like a madman still. One of her pigtails whacked John in the face, as she turned her head to look at him, causing more laughter from both of them. “I told you, but you wouldn’t believe me!” She placed a finger over his lips, shushing him. Gently, he pulled her hand away, observing the pink polish that was chipping off of her nails. “We need to repaint these soon. Maybe we should paint them blue next time, yeah?”
Zoe shook her head, telling him, “Blue is a boy color.”
“Okay then,” he chuckled, “how about yellow? Like the sunshine?”
Hesitantly, she nodded, her pigtails bouncing as she did so. “I like the sunshine.”
He set his phone aside again, trying to keep his eyes from drooping. He wiggled around in the uncomfortable chair, drifting in and out of consciousness, until it was seven in the morning and he needed to step out of the room to call in sick for work. Upon returning, he approached the woman at the desk, a different one than the lady who reprimanded him earlier, causing her to look up with a solemn smile. “How can I help you, sir?”
“My daughter,” he croaked out with a hoarse voice, “was brought here yesterday morning around ten a.m. from Greenview Elementary in an ambulance. Her name is Zoe Dawson, and I still haven’t been updated about her condition.”
The woman nodded and turn around, looking through shelves of binders, pulling out a dusty rose colored one and setting it on the desk. She sat in front of John again, flipping through the pages. “She is in our intensive care unit,” she informed him, looking back at John with hooded eyes. “Her present guardian is her mother, Sara Ellis. She fell off of the third-floor balcony, overlooking the first floor, and broke her neck and spine. Sara has requested that John Dawson not be allowed access into the ICU, claiming it would conflict with a restraining order. Is that you?”
Tears rushed down down his cheeks, as he nodded slowly, looking down at the floor. “She has a history of not allowing me in her life,” John choked out.
She continued, after a pause, her voice quieter this time, due to the realization that she should not be sharing this information with him. “She’s been diagnosed with quadriplegia; she’s paralyzed from the neck down. This will most likely be permanent, but Dr. Anderson, our head of neurosurgery, is currently working with Dr. Foster, our head of pediatric surgery, to the best of their abilities. She’ll be kept here for at least a few days, if not a few weeks.”
Unable to process the heavy load of new information, he stared at the open binder on the desk, his eyes scanning his daughter’s name over and over again. That couldn’t possibly be his Zoe. Zoe Dawson. It couldn’t be her, yet it was. Quadriplegic. His daughter. “And I can’t go in to see her?”
“I’m sorry, sir. I think you should go home and rest.”
Without another word, he spun on his heel, and exited through the automatic doors. Feeling all emotions at once and nothing at all at the same time, he marched to his small, tan car, unlocking the door and sliding in with ease, slamming it behind him.
His keys were in his hand, hovering in front of the ignition, but he couldn’t bring himself to start the engine. His hand fell open, letting the keys fall to the rubber mat on the floor. He slumped in the seat, his eyes falling closed and his tears drying to his face, making his skin feel sticky.
He realized, in that moment, that he no longer loved Sara - he couldn’t find it in him to still love her after this. He was furious with her for leading him on, cheating on him, and signing that damned restraining order that prohibited him from seeing the little girl that he gave to her, but ever more so, he found he was furious with himself for waiting for her to return, thinking that he loved her for all of this time.
So, he left.
Inside of the hospital, unbeknownst to John, his phone rang on the desk of the secretary. Had he answered, he would’ve heard Sara’s voice; he would’ve seen Zoe. He would have gone back to his ex-wife with salty tears pooling in his eyes, as he confessed to her how much he missed her. He would’ve been the one to take care of Zoe those following, torturous years, while Sara partied and went out with other guys and drank until she forgot she even had a daughter.
But he didn’t answer. Instead, he rolled out of the parking lot, as the sun peeked over the roof of the hospital, and drove as far away from that disgustingly unlucky building as possible, oblivious to the voicemail left for him, beseeching him to turn around.