“I am!” My nails dug into my palm, clenched together in grandfather’s oversized pocket. “I’m not like you. I don’t have siblings or even parents. I only have them, and if they’re gone, then I’ll have nothing. And you’d think I’d be better prepared because they’re so old, that I should be prepared when any day I could wake up and find them dead. But they are all I’ve ever known, and how can anyone be ready for their whole world to fall apart around them, even if they are warned? What’s that noise? Are you listening to me?” My hands were shaking even worse than when I had no coat.

“I am. I’m just grabbing some things—”

“Never mind.” I closed my eyes. “Forget I said anything. I’m—I’m being overdramatic.”

I hung up before she could respond. For a while I stared at my phone, hoping she would call or at least text me back. Neither came. The smoker walked past me, heading inside. He stopped to offer me a cigarette. I took it even though I have never smoked in my life. A small bit of kindness that made me cry after he left me alone outside.

It was then that I realized who would be awake. Who would have to listen to me, even if he did not want to. Who owed me, at least that much.

“Grandmother is in the hospital,” I said as soon as my father picked up. “We are all here. Except for you.”

“What happened?” he asked, his voice through the phone sounding so far away.

“You left,” I said, even though it was obvious that was not what he was asking. I wanted him to hurt, to feel even a fraction of what I was feeling. “You left even though my mother had already left. You left and didn’t come back, not even now when grandmother is sick. You left them to take care of your child, and now you’ve left me to take care of your parents. And I never hated you because I trusted you had your reasons to leave, and I love them, you have no idea how much I love them—”

“Monica—”

“I never hated you,” I repeated. “Until now.”

I gave him a chance to say something. When it was only silence from the other end, I hung up.

I turned off my phone. I did not want to talk to anyone. I did not want even my service provider or whatever apps running on my phone to know I was at a hospital, to know I was facing something I might not be able to handle. And then I thought of grandfather, alone in the waiting room in his faded pajamas, and began to cry all over again.