A Coma

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“How’s it going today, Dad?” I sat down beside the bed in the intensive care unit, checking the wall of monitors hanging behind my father. It had to be the world’s most depressing headboard. The machines beeped and blinked rhythmically, the only sound in the glass bubble that was my father’s bedroom for the time being.

I touched my hand to his forehead.

It was clammy, cool.

My stomach rolled. I hated seeing him this way. The man was a titan of industry, a legend whose name was associated with success and spoken with the highest regard the world over.

It was getting harder to remember that with each passing day. Lying in his metal framed hospital bed, he was wasting away right in front of my eyes. More worrying still was that he hadn’t yet opened his own.

It was day three of my own personal hell, waking up to come spend the day with a man who wasn’t even conscious. The doctors still couldn’t say if he ever would be again.

We were playing a waiting game, waiting on a man I’d never