Chapter 7: The Terms stared back

OLIVIA’S POV

I should have gone home to rest.

That was what Shay had been texting me all morning. Go home. Sleep. You can’t pour from an empty cup. 

All the things people say when they don’t know what else to offer.

But I couldn’t go home. I couldn’t sit in that quiet apartment with Adrian’s ghost still living in every corner of it. So I went back to the only place that made sense.

The hospital.

I smelled the familiar cold of the hallway before I even reached the ward. That sharp bitter scent that had started feeling more like home than anywhere else lately. I turned the corner toward my father’s room and stopped.

The door was wide open.

Three nurses moved quickly inside. A doctor I hadn’t seen before was already at my father’s bedside, speaking in low urgent tones while someone adjusted the monitor. The steady beeping I had grown used to was faster now. Uneven.

“Excuse me” I stepped forward.

A nurse turned and held her hand up firmly. “Please wait outside.”

“That’s my father”

“Miss, please wait outside.”

The door swung partially closed in front of me.

I stood in the hallway with my hand still raised and my heart somewhere on the floor beneath my feet. Through the small glass panel on the door I could see movement. Shadows shifting quickly. 

Hands reaching. Someone adjusting the drip above his bed.

I pressed my palm flat against the wall to keep myself upright.

He’s okay. He has to be okay. I can still hear the monitor.

I kept telling myself that on repeat while the minutes stretched out like something being pulled too thin. I counted the beeps through the glass. Uneven. Then slower. Then steadier.

Finally the urgency inside the room settled.

Bodies relaxed. Movements slowed. 

Someone wrote something down.

I exhaled shakily and realized I had been holding my breath the entire time.

When the doctor stepped out into the hallway, I was already in front of him.

“What happened?” My voice cracked on the last word. “Is he okay? What’s going on?”

The doctor reached up out of habit and adjusted the stethoscope around his neck. Then he exhaled the kind of breath that prepares you for something you don’t want to hear.

“His blood pressure spiked significantly,” he said carefully. “That kind of spike puts him at serious risk for a stroke. Possibly a cardiac event.”

The hallway tilted slightly.

“But he’s okay right now?”

“He’s stable. For now.” He said those last two words with the kind of weight that made them feel temporary.

 “But Olivia, this is exactly what we have been warning you about. His body is telling us it cannot wait much longer. Every day without that surgery is another day his system works harder just to keep him here.”

I nodded slowly.

I was trying to listen. I was genuinely trying.

But somewhere between blood pressure spiked and cardiac events my mind had already traveled back to that private room at St. Laurent. 

To Jaden Parker’s voice laying out terms like he was reading a weather forecast. To the file sitting on that table with its clean black clauses and the pen clipped neatly to the cover.

No emotions attached.

“Olivia.”

The doctor’s hand landed gently on my arm.

I blinked.

“I need you to come to a decision today,” he said. “Not tomorrow. Today. Because the longer we wait, the weaker he becomes. And if his body deteriorates past a certain point” He paused. “The surgery itself becomes a risk we may not be able to take.”

I looked at him.

“You’re telling me if we wait too long, he won’t even be strong enough for the operation.”

He held my gaze.

“Yes.”

A quiet thank you was all I could manage.

I watched him walk away down the hallway. Then I turned and pushed open the door to my father’s room.

He looked worse than this morning.

I didn’t want to believe that was possible but it was. The color in his face had thinned somehow. His breathing was visible in a way it hadn’t been before, his chest rising and falling with effort.

I pulled the chair close to his bed and sat down. Took his hand in both of mine.

It felt cold.

That scared me more than anything the doctor had said.

“Dad.” My voice broke immediately. I hadn’t planned to cry. I was so tired of crying. But the tears came anyway, hot and fast and completely disrespectful of everything I had decided on my way here. “I’m so sorry.”

He didn’t stir. Just breathed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t fix this faster.” I wiped my face with the back of my hand but it didn’t help. “I had this whole picture in my head, you know? Of how things were supposed to go. Me saving enough money the right way. Adrian standing beside me. 

You walking me down the aisle one day looking ridiculous in a suit you ironed three times because you wanted it to be perfect.”

A broken laugh escaped me.

“You always iron things three times.”

The monitor beeped steadily beside him.

“After Mom died, it was just us.” My thumb moved slowly across his knuckles.

 “You learned how to braid hair from a YouTube video because you didn’t want me going to school looking a mess. You burned every single thing you tried to bake for the first two years and then somehow figured it out and never let me forget it.” I laughed again through the tears. “You still bring up that birthday cake like you invented chocolate.”

I looked at his face. At the lines that had deepened over the past few weeks. At the man who had carried everything so I wouldn’t have to.

I reached into my bag slowly.

The contract was still folded exactly where I had placed it. I smoothed it open on my knee and stared at it.

The terms stared back.

No emotions attached. No intimacy. Two years.

I thought about Jaden’s voice.

“Walk away. I’m sure you’ll figure out fifty thousand dollars on your own.”

And the worst part was that somewhere between his cold certainty and my father’s cold hand, the answer had already made itself.

I had just been too afraid to say it out loud.

I folded the contract carefully and held it against my chest for a moment.

Then I looked at my father one more time.

“I don’t know this man,” I whispered. “And this is not the life I planned. But you are still here and I am going to keep you here.”

I stood up. Smoothed my clothes. Wiped my face properly this time.

And pulled out my phone to call Jaden Parker.