|Katherine|
“Noel, how’s Grandpa?” The words escaped my lips the instant we stepped into his hospital room, almost before I had time to think.
The familiar antiseptic tang hit me first—sharp, sterile, a smell that always seemed to cling to the edges of memory. Then came the faint, rhythmic beeping of the heart monitor, steady and unrelenting, like a metronome marking each precious second.
My eyes immediately found him. Grandpa. Lying so still beneath the crisp white sheets, just as he had the last time I was here. His posture hadn’t changed. No flutter of eyelids. No subtle twitch of a finger. Just stillness, an unnerving stillness that made my chest tighten.
The doctor stood at his bedside, expression calm, unreadable, professional to a fault. Two nurses hovered quietly just behind hi
