CHAPTER 123

TWO WEEKS LATER

It had been two weeks since Hazel was last awake, two weeks since I stood helplessly behind the glass doors and watched the doctors work tirelessly to keep her alive. Two weeks of Valerie asking over and over again for her mommy. I watched her frail body shake with severe convulsions that looked too painful for a human being to endure and the fear I felt at that moment must have been palpable. I thought I lost her, I believed I did. I saw the desperation and sense of urgency in the eyes of countless doctors and nurses, I watched them all shake their heads at me without giving me a direct answer to the one million questions I asked. I knew that things weren’t looking good.

I didn’t leave the hospital for the first few days. I refused to leave, until Grandpa had to forcefully pry my fingers away from the glass doors of Hazel’s room, saying that I needed to shower and get some real food in my system, and work was piling up too. But I came back everyday after work, struggl