“I texted you,” she said. “The morning after. Just once.”

“I know,” I said. “I know you did.”

“I waited all day,” she said. And then she looked back at the ceiling, because she couldn’t look at me while she said the rest. “I figured if you didn’t answer that, you weren’t ever going to.”

I pulled the plastic chair up to the bed. I didn’t ask permission. I just sat.

For eight months I was the man standing in a doorway holding a deadbolt, telling a crying seventeen-year-old to learn responsibility. Now I was the one in the doorway, and I was the one asking to be let back in.

She turned her hand over on the blanket. Not reaching for me. Just open.

I laid mine down next to it. I didn’t dare touch her. The two words I never texted back were sitting in my throat like a stone, so I finally said them out loud.

“Dad please,” I told her. “That’s all you asked me for. And I’m asking you now.”

She closed her eyes. A tear went sideways into her hair. She didn’t say it back.

I’m still sitting in that chair. She lets me stay through visiting hours. That’s all I’ve got so far, and I’m not going to ask her for one minute more than she’s ready to give.

On the third day she let me get her water without flinching. Small thing. Felt like the whole world.

There was a TV bolted up in the corner playing some cooking show with the sound off, and she watched it instead of me. The room smelled like that pink hand soap and old coffee from the machine down the hall. I memorized everything because I was scared it might be all I got.

“They told me you give your tip money away,” I said.

She shrugged against the pillow. “Renee’s got a baby. I didn’t.”

“Kayla.” My voice cracked on her name. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know how to say it right.”

“Then don’t say it right,” she said, still watching the TV. “Just don’t leave before I wake up.”

So I didn’t. I slept folded into that plastic chair with my coat over me like a blanket two sizes too big.

The nurse asked me on the way out if I was her dad. I had to think about whether I’d earned the word.

“Trying to be,” I said.

Kayla heard me. She didn’t smile. But she didn’t crossed-out me either. She just said, “Coffee’s burnt out there too, by the way.”

I’m still in the chair.