A Stroke of Bad Luck

BLAKE

It was late by the time I landed in Florida. My mind was in a daze. It felt like I was stuck in a bad dream. I replayed the morning over and over again in my mind, trying to change the way it ended. But it never changed.

All I could hear was Danny’s voice telling me our father was in the hospital. That he’d had a stroke and I had to come home. To my dad’s home, anyway. I didn’t really have a home anymore. I guess I thought of Florida as home because that was where my father was.

If anything were to happen to him—my throat threatened to close up. Breathing was hard enough as it was without those kinds of thoughts.

It felt like it took ages to get to the hospital, but in reality it was only a matter of hours. Unless my watch was broken and it had, in fact, taken as long as it seemed.

The roads were quiet this time of night around here. Dad’s neighborhood was one of the quieter ones and the hospital Danny told me they were at was right on the outskirts.

It was dark except for the p