Midnight

Typically, I’d never find myself speeding toward Athens near midnight unless I was late for a new movie. Yet, there I was: going eighty miles per hour in an attempt to reach the hospital on time. I knew that there was no benefit to getting there ten minutes earlier, nor a punishment for being ten minutes later, but when the adrenaline is pumping, every bit of logical thought regarding safety seems to leave your mind

Just an hour before, there was a chilling phone call. The girl I’d been together with for around two years (I'm still with her today, although it has been over four years now) was panicking. Her father had suffered a heart attack not even a full week prior, and he had apparently started convulsing on his bed before falling unconscious. She was begging me to help her, to tell her anything she could do to save him.

Obviously, I had no idea what to tell her. I ran the phone upstairs to my mother, who actually has experience in the medical field. I sat in the room adjacent on a couch, my mind racing. It was hard to believe that it was happening. The usual ideas went through my head: he’s probably going to die, she is going to be devastated for a while, and I’ll likely need to work twice as hard to keep her spirits up. My mom came in shaking her head. I knew what it meant.

The rest of the night, as they say, was a blur. I remember getting there just in time to see her running out the front doors of the hospital, crying, with a nurse chasing after her. I remember sitting on a curb at the end of the parking lot while she continuously repeated that this felt like a terrible dream. I’d like to say I did a proper job of comforting her, but for most of the night, I just sat there with her. I guess there wasn’t much else I could have done.