Finally, after an eternity, I pulled into the UConn Health Center’s giant parking lot, threw my shitty little rental in park and ran to get inside, slipping and sliding, since the rain had frozen when the temperature dropped, and it was a good ten degrees colder up here.

An orderly directed me to the family waiting area, and I ran there, too.

Mom, Jules and Oliver were in the waiting room, Jules looking worried, Mom a thousand miles away.

“Is he—” I began, but my voice choked off.

“Unconscious but alive,” Oliver said, getting up to hug me. “He made it through surgery. We’re waiting for the doctor to tell us what we can expect.”

My sister got up and we hugged awkwardly, too. She stepped on my foot, and my hair got tangled in her earring for a second.

“Hi, Mom,” I said.

“Hello, Sadie.” Her voice was expressionless. Shock, I guessed. She was clutching a plastic bag to her chest. I kissed her cheek, and she still didn’t look at me. “Hello, Sadie,” she repeated, and I felt a twinge of sympathy.

“Hi, Mom. You doing okay?” She was younger than Dad, and I’d heard that seventy was the new forty, but still.

“I’m fine,” she said. My hands were shaking, but she seemed utterly calm.

“Can I see him?”

“He’s resting.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“Sure, sure,” said Jules. “Come on. We’re only allowed a few minutes an hour, but come say . . . well.” Her voice choked off, and she took a shaky breath.

We walked down a long, brightly lit hallway and went into a room.

Oh, God. Oh, Daddy.

He was on a ventilator, his face swollen, a cut on his nose, a black eye. His head was shaved and bandaged. “Jesus,” I whispered.

“They had to drill into his head to relieve the bleeding,” Jules said.

He didn’t look like himself, but it was him, all right. Those were his outrageous eyebrows. That was his wedding ring on his left hand, his class ring from Boston College on his right. The scar on his arm from when he had a bad break in college.

“It’s a wait-and-see situation,” Jules said, and her voice was uncharacteristically soft.

I didn’t know where to touch my father; he looked so small in the hospital bed.

“Daddy?” I whispered, putting my hand on his chest, over his heart. “It’s Sadie. I’m here. I love you so much, Daddy.”

That was all I was allowed. A nurse told us he needed quiet, and Jules led me back to the waiting room.

“What happened?” I asked, and Oliver, the diplomat in the family, filled me in.