At the hospital, everything became harsh and bright, filled with disinfectant smells and sterile sounds, and when the doctor finally spoke to me, he said, “Your parents are alive, but they were exposed to very high levels of carbon monoxide.”
When I mentioned the detectors, he told me calmly that one had no batteries and another had been unplugged.
That was the moment something inside me shifted.
Because my parents were not careless.
Someone had made sure those alarms would not work.
PART 2
The ICU did not feel like a place where time passed normally, because every minute stretched longer than it should and every hour seemed to collapse into a blur of sounds, lights, and quiet dread that never truly lifted.
Miles arrived just after midnight with damp hair and a gray hoodie, and without asking a single question he pulled me into a tight embrace and whispered, “I am here with you, and you do not have to hold this alone anymore.”
I wanted to believe him, but my eyes kept drifting toward the ICU doors as if I could force them open through sheer will.