MY SISTER WOKE UP FROM THE COMA AND TOLD ME A SECRET ABOUT OUR FATHER
The monitor beeped steadily beside her bed, and I held onto her cold, thin hand, whispering apologies.
The hospital room felt sterile and smelled faintly of antiseptic and lilies. The relentless bright light made my eyes ache. I just sat there, utterly still, watching her chest’s shallow rise and fall.
Hours turned into days, marked only by the quiet hum of machines and hushed footsteps. Then, a sudden flutter of her eyelids, a tiny hopeful sign. Her grip on my cold hand tightened, surprisingly strong, pulling me back. She looked right at me, eyes hazy, then slowly focused.
Her voice, when it came, was a dry rasp, barely a whisper. “He didn’t leave,” she choked out, gaze locking onto mine, intense and piercing. “Mom didn’t tell you the truth.” My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic drum.
“He tried to come back,” she whispered, tears tracing paths through dried fluids on her cheek, smearing the mask. “But she wouldn’t let him see us. Ever.” Just then, the door opened, and the day nurse stepped in, clipboard in hand, wearing a bright smile.
But the smile dropped as another nurse rushed in, wide-eyed, pointing at the screen above the door.
👇 Full story continued in the comments…But the smile dropped as another nurse rushed in, wide-eyed, pointing at the screen above the door. I followed their gaze. It wasn’t a medical screen, but a news feed display set into the wall in the hallway, visible through the open door.
A breaking news alert flashed across it, accompanied by a small, slightly blurry photo. It was him. Our father.
My sister stiffened, her eyes widening further, tracking the scrolling text. The air left my lungs in a rush. The headline registered a second later: “Local Businessman, [Father’s Name], Found Deceased.”
The room went silent except for the rhythmic beeping of the monitor, suddenly deafening. The nurses hesitated, their medical purpose forgotten for a moment, their faces etched with shared shock.
My sister’s grip on my hand went lax. A fresh wave of tears streamed down her face, but this time they weren’t just sorrow for what was lost in the past, but for what was lost irrevocably now. “He… he was close,” she choked out, the words catching in her throat. “He sent letters. Mom burned them. He was waiting… hoping…”
The truth hit me with the force of a physical blow. My mother hadn’t just said he left. She had actively blocked him, severing the connection, ensuring we believed he simply abandoned us. My father hadn’t been a coward who walked away; he had been a man trying to return, thwarted by a lie.
The nurse with the clipboard finally found her voice, moving towards the bed with a professional kindness that felt alien in the face of this raw, public grief. “We should probably…” she began, gesturing towards the door.
But I wasn’t listening. I looked from the screen displaying his dead face to my sister’s tear-streaked one, finally awake, finally free of the coma, only to deliver a truth that arrived seconds too late. The secret she carried, the weight that perhaps contributed to the accident that put her here, was now a permanent ache. Our father had tried to come back. And our mother’s lie had ensured that when he finally did, it was only in a news headline, the brief flicker of his image on a screen marking the end of his long, silent wait.