That’s when Emily found him.
She hadn’t been looking for him.
She wasn’t there specifically to talk to him.
She was simply passing through the hospital.
But she noticed him.
She stopped.
And she asked one simple question.
“Are you okay?”
Mike laughed bitterly when he told me the story.
“No,” he said. “I wasn’t okay.”
Somehow, despite being a stranger, he began telling Emily everything.
He told her about Kylie.
He told her about the diagnosis.
He told her about the bills.
He told her that he had sold his house.
He told her about the fundraising.
He told her that none of it was enough.
And then he admitted something he had never wanted to say out loud.
He felt like a failure.
“I was her father,” he told Emily.
“And I couldn’t save her.”
But Emily didn’t judge him.
She didn’t lecture him.
