It’s just before 8:30 a.m. I’m heading out of the subway and going to my therapist’s appointment when my sister calls me. “Celena, Dad started having chest pains. He called the ambulance . . .” Something in me breaks as I tell my sister, “I . . .was just at a Shiva for my friend’s mother last night . . .” Tina loses her barely composed voice and we both are crying. A stranger passes me by and quickly averts his eyes, embarrassed, and I think, My dad might be dying. I’m not embarrassed I’m crying. Why are you? My sister promises to call when she hears anything new.

Two weeks ago, I was standing inside my parents’ house in Maryland, looking out on my husband sharing beers with my father on the deck. They were talking about car insurance, and I remember being glad the two men I loved could enjoy a sunny day, drink beer, and talk about the mundane things in life with enthusiasm. I wonder at this moment if I’ve ever told my father I’m glad he loves the man I love. I wonder if he knows how much his opinion has always meant to me.

I enter my therapist’s building and the minutes begin ticking away. I barely know what I’m doing. Should I leave for Maryland now or should I just wait until I hear news? Should I go see my therapist? It seems dumb to sit and talk about myself for 45 minutes.

I remember a time, long ago, when I last felt this aimless and lost: I was waiting on hearing results from a biopsy about a lump that was possibly malignant. I had called my father and he had told me soothingly, “You don’t know anything yet. You can get scared about what you don’t know.” My father has a booming voice that sometimes intimidates people, but the sound of it comforts me. I want to hear my father’s voice again. I wonder if he is in the ambulance or on his way to the hospital. Is he awake or is he unconscious? Is he talking? Or is he hurting too much to talk?

On the elevator ride up to my therapist, I start thinking about dancing with my father at my sister’s wedding, having drunk one too many wines, and telling him “I love you” for the first time. For a moment I feel grateful that I had said those words to him, that no matter what happened, he knew how I felt.

Then I remember dancing with my father at my own wedding, which was only two months ago. Dancing to Andrea Boccelli’s “Time to Say Goodbye,” he twirled me around on the floor, and we both pretended to know Italian and belted out the words together. I didn’t want to be grateful that I had had that moment with my Dad, that he had walked me down the aisle, that I had seen him cry when I read my vows to my husband. I had meant to tell him that I loved him that day. I don’t know why I didn’t. Maybe I thought I would have more time to make it more of a habit.

When Janet, my therapist, opens her door, my face feels rough, splotchy with tears. I’m grateful that I don’t wear makeup at times like these, but then I wonder, Am I a bad daughter if I’m thinking about my appearance?

I stutter what’s going on. Janet nods quietly, allowing me to break apart in front of her. I take a seat, but I don’t know how to put into words what is going through my mind. My mouth is moving and I’m not sure of the words coming out. I know I’m talking about my father, but it’s not matching my thoughts. I’m telling Janet, “I don’t tell my father I love him enough,” but I’m thinking Daddy knows. He always knows how I feel. Doesn’t he?

I’m remembering myself as a kid, how my father used to carry me in his arms when I was tired and how this is one of the first memories I ever have. I remember how my father always knew to pick me up before I even told him I was tired. I remember how my father looked when I told him that I was leaving Maryland for New York; how sad he seemed at the thought of empty hallways and empty rooms, but he wasn’t surprised by the fact I was going to New York to be a writer. He seemed to know that’s what I wanted to do with my life.

When I was twenty-four, my job at the time was killing me and keeping me awake at nights. I had come home to Maryland for comfort. My father heard me tossing in my bed and said quietly through my closed door, “Celena, do you want to talk?” I remember sitting there with my father, at 7 in the morning on a Saturday, the cruel glare of the kitchen light hitting my eyes as my father told me, “I believe in you. This is just a job. It won’t defeat you.”

I tell Janet, “I was just at my friend’s mother’s Shiva last night. Our parents are all dying. Four of my friends have lost their parents this year and I was telling my husband, ‘We’re too young to be losing our parents’ and I know I’m wrong. There’s no age limit to when you lose a parent. It just happens.” In the moment that I say those words, I realize that I feel that way because I still think of myself as a kid, my daddy’s little girl. I always see myself in my father’s arms, being carried, but I know now that’s not who I am now. It’s what I can never be again.

In those thirty minutes when I don’t know what is happening to my father, my thoughts are everywhere, scattered pieces of my life with my father floating in front of me. In those thirty minutes, I see what my life was and is with my father. And in those thirty minutes, I imagine the future, whatever it is. If my father does survive, I imagine how much help my mother will need in caring for him and how I will have to be that help. If my father does survive, I will see myself more of a fixture in my parents’ home in Maryland, grateful for whatever time left I do have with my father. Then, I imagine what will happen when or if my father dies. I imagine how much it’ll take my breath away, how I’m not sure I’ll ever really recover from the loss of someone that’s protected me my entire life. I imagine how my mother will be without my father, how empty the house, how large the silence. I imagine how I will have to spend more time with her, help her as she transitions to a life without him.

I will learn that my father was lucky. He was sitting in front of the TV, eating a small plate of egg and cheese with his morning coffee. My father then felt a stabbing pain in his chest and called my mother, who was already at work. Haltingly, my father described the pain to her. My mother was alarmed and told him to call an ambulance. My father carefully got dressed, dialed 911. He opened the front door as 911 advised him, and sat on the stoop to wait for their arrival.

The ambulance will be there in record time, Franklin Square Hospital being only two streets away. My father will be grateful that he chose a house so near a hospital. They will bring him in and prep him for surgery as my mother rushes to be with him. He will get a stint in his heart to unclog his arteries. I will be on a train and with my father at the hospital later that day in time for the last visiting hours. He will feel bad that I came all the way down from New York to be with him. “I’m fine now. You didn’t have to go away from work.”

I will see my father fragile for the first time, tubes snaking in and out of his arms. I will see for the first time that he’s not always the strong man that I imagine. He is as fragile as the little girl he carried in his arms all those years ago. I will hold his hand. I will think the words in my head: You don’t have to be so strong now. I’ll be strong now for you and Mom. I won’t say the words because I know my father already knows this. He always knows how I feel.

 Celena Cipriaso has written for a soap opera (the one with the chick that got nominated 19 times), and her work has also been in Seal Press’ P.S. What I Didn’t Say, HarperCollins’ Yell-Oh Girls, Word Riot, AsianAvenue.com, and The Beer Sessions.