What the Rain Sounds Like
Lightning cracked across the sky hard enough to turn the hospital windows into mirrors. In that white-blue flash, I saw my father at the far end of the corridor, soaked through, gripping his phone like it was the only thing keeping him upright. A police officer stood beside him, speaking in a low, careful voice.
I heard every word anyway. “Sir, I really think you need to see this for yourself. She’s awake.
There’s someone with her.”
My father didn’t answer. He stared through the gap in the curtain around my bed with a look I had never seen on him before. Not anger.
Not the worn resignation he wore at home like a second coat. Something older than those things. Fear that looked buried and recently unearthed.
His face had gone gray. Then, with the stiffness of a man walking toward something he dug himself, he pushed open the door. I was lying propped up in the hospital bed, an IV in my arm, a dull ache spreading through my ribs with every breath.
My hair was still damp from the rain. The room smelled of antiseptic and wet asphalt and the soap a nurse had used to wipe blood from my temple. I was not alone.
The man seated beside me looked up as my father entered. He had one hand wrapped loosely around mine, as though he had been afraid to let go in case I disappeared. His face was unfamiliar and not unfamiliar at the same time, one of those impossible faces that seems to exist at the edge of a memory you cannot quite locate.
He was somewhere in his early fifties, with rain-dark hair threaded through with silver and tired eyes that seemed gentler than any eyes had a right to be after a night like this. There was something grounded about him, something steady, as if the storm had spent itself against him and failed. When his gaze met my father’s, the whole room changed.
My father stopped in the doorway. For a second, nobody moved. The storm rattled the window.
The heart monitor beside my bed kept its patient, indifferent rhythm. Then my father made a sound that was not quite language. More like breath catching on broken glass.
“You,” he said. “You can’t be here.”
The man beside me did not flinch. He only tightened his fingers gently around my hand, as if reminding me I was not alone, even though I had no idea who he was.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
Tap READ MORE to discover the rest 🔎👇
