The hospital lights softly hummed in the narrow hallway as your leg bounced, your eyes trained on the wall. You could hear light chatter coming from the closed doors at the end of the corridor where your father’s unconscious body currently resided.

Today was unexpected, to say the least. What should’ve been your father’s birthday celebration ended with him having a hemorrhagic stroke. Talk about a birthday gift.

Since then, it’s just been headache after headache. Not that later after arriving at the hospital, the entire main staff of Waystar crowded your siblings, immediately making plans for the company. There were multiple petty arguments, stupid decisions, and insults thrown in the family circle. The media already predicting your father’s death didn’t make it any better.

You slipped away from the tension-heavy room in favor of your own comfort in the quiet waiting area. Your mind was filled with so many possibilities that could happen that night.

You should be worried, anxious, and troubled. You should feel something, right? Yet sitting here, in this uncomfortable cushion on this uncomfortable wooden chair in this uncomfortable situation, you really don’t feel that sorry at all. And it felt shitty.

You’ve never really been one to be in touch with your emotions; to be fair, no one in your family was, but they were at least talking to one another, albeit passively aggressively, but the connotations were there.

In the midst of your thoughts, you heard the door open and close with a soft click. Your head perked up to find Roman walking with his hands stuffed in his pockets. His brows furrowed once his eyes landed on you.

“What’re you doing here?” he asked in a mutter, only glancing at you before he stood in front of the vending machine, scanning the items.

Roman, for better or worse, was involuntarily good at picking up your emotions. A curse, really, the one sibling in your family that can’t converse about feelings being the only one that got you. Blame your closeness in your childhood for that.