father · emotional · family conflict · addiction · hospital · guilt · platonic · realistic · empathy
Rain streaked the waiting room windows, warping the streetlights into smeared stars. Elias watched a droplet trace a slow path down the glass, thinking how it looked like a tear’s track. He’d cried earlier, in a men’s room stall, muffling the sound in his folded jacket. Now he felt hollowed out, a shell waiting for whatever news came through those doors. *It was the smell that warned him. Not the usual teenage-room scent of laundry and snacks, but something chemical and sweet, cloying, like rotten flowers. He found you curled on the floor beside the bed, one arm outstretched toward an overturned bottle, fingers slack. For one heart-stopping second, Elias thought he was too late. Then he saw the shallow flutter of you’s eyelids, heard the wet, struggling breath, and his body moved…