The silenced TV in dad’s hospital room flickers, filling it with a ghostly blue glow. The images from Landon Winchester’s press conference are still flashing on the business segment on the nightly news. I think about asking the nurses to change the channel, but I don’t have the energy.

Besides, I’m not a virgin anymore.

Not in life, and not to Brookdale University Hospital – a place where happiness goes to die. Asking the nurses to do anything around here – even provide basic medical care – is a fool’s errand.

Carol Winters’ words echo in my mind. “There are foster homes, and then there are foster homes, Penny,” she says.

“We both know you lied about being Charlie Thorne’s wife. The State will discover the truth eventually, Ms. Walters. Make the right choice. Come clean, and I’ll place Tilly in a pleasant, safe family: somewhere on the Upper East Side, maybe. I’m sure there’s a hedge fund family out there who would jump at the chance to take the mighty Charlie Thorne’s daughter. Or don’t… and maybe I won’t be so generous.”

“I’m sorry, dad,” I whisper. “I tried. I did everything I knew how to do. I know you won’t be proud of me, not after the things I’ve done. I lied, I cheated. But it was all to help you. Or to save you –”

My voice disappears, and my throat chokes up. I kick off the heels that Charlie – no Landon – sent me, and climb up onto dad’s hospital bed. I curl up next to him.

I remember a time when the difference between my petite frame, and daddy’s strong, broad shoulders was almost comical. Now, though, after years of cancer and hospital treatments, dad’s once proud frame has almost completely withered away.

I squeeze my eyes shut.

“Maybe I should have done it, dad,” I say. “I could have saved your life.”

But then I would have thrown away every last scrap of my honor.

Now I’ve opened the floodgates, I’ll never be able to stop. The emotion floods out of me, carrying words that jumble against each other in my depressed eagerness to come clean.

“That woman, Carol Winters,” I continue – even though my dad’s in a medically induced coma and can’t hear a damn word I say.

“She showed me her fancy Italian designer clothes, her purse – everything – thousands of dollars’ worth. She outright admitted Landon paid for them with bribes. She offered me the same. I don’t get it, dad. What happened to her? She must have been a good person, once. Who goes into social work if they don’t care? Who could threaten a child like that?”

Tears burn as they streak down my cheeks. I don’t bother wiping them aside, and they fall onto the musty hospital blanket.

“But I could have saved you, dad. If I had taken her offer – their offer. Landon, he would have paid for everything: all your treatment; whatever it took to get you better.”

I strain to open my eyes, and look at dad’s face. His hair is thinning from all the drugs, and his skin is pale and sallow. He’s hooked up to a feeding tube, as well as another dripping hydration in through the top of his hand.

I hate to see him like this, and to know that I could have done something to prevent it.

“But you wouldn’t have wanted that, would you dad?” I whisper.

The monitoring machines on a trolley by the hospital bed blink and moan, but every line stays straight and placid. I stare at them through blurred eyes, waiting for any sign that dad can understand what I’m saying – that he can hear me from somewhere inside his coma – but there’s nothing.

I’m just hoping beyond hope.

I know it’s not possible.

I swallow. My throat hurts from crying, and it shoots a pang of pain down my front. I deserve it.

“I failed you, didn’t I?”

The tears are now streaming down my cheeks in quantities large enough to soak the silk cocktail dress that still clings to my body. A digital clock mounted high on the wall shows that it’s past three in the morning.

I don’t know where the time went.

“I know you wouldn’t have respected me, and I would deserve it. You wouldn’t have wanted me to con Charlie. I knew it even when Robbie convinced me into doing it, but I told myself it was okay. I said I’d do anything to save you. Only…”

My voice cracks and I close my eyes once more, swaddling my face in my hands. My stomach is exhausted and tender from hours of sobbing.

“… Only it’s not true. I won’t. I couldn’t take that bitch from CPS’ offer. I couldn’t throw Tilly under the bus like that. Or Charlie…”

Dad’s heart rate monitor bleeps once. I don’t register the sound at first. I’m too bound up in my own problems: too worried about dad’s health to notice as it dwindles away right in front of me.

Then there’s another beep.

My eyes burst open, I look up. Dad’s face – already pale – is now white and ghostlike. Something’s wrong.

I scramble to my feet, moving too slowly. I’m numb. Everything feels as though I’m stumbling through quicksand.

“Help,” I say. But my voice is quiet, way too quiet to be heard. “Help!”

Then all hell breaks loose. The line on dad’s heart rate monitor spikes: climbing; climbing; climbing. It’s at ninety-five, then a hundred, then a hundred and ten, and then another spike, and then it’s past a hundred and fifty.

I’m no medical professional, but I know that he can’t bear this kind of pressure for long. He’s too frail, his body too fragile.

And his mind –

– After months in a medically induced coma, I don’t even know if there’s anything left of dad and the man he was to carry on the fight.

The hospital room door clatters open. Things start to operate at a different speed. A nurse in blue scrubs runs in.

It’s strange what your mind focuses on at times like this. I see the spectacles dancing on a string around her neck. I see her hair switching from side to side – almost in slow motion.

“You: move,” she orders. It sounds slower, stretched out in my head.

“Move!”

Then it doesn’t. Then there’s another nurse, and another. After all I’ve said about Brookdale Hospital, I still can’t do anything but hope that I was wrong; that they are better at the job than I made out.

Because if they’re not; dad’s dead.

Finally, as though my body remembers how to reassert control, my feet start to move. I press myself against the wall; then inch out of the hospital room. I can’t see this. I can’t bear to watch my own father die in front of me.

The world is an explosion of bedside alarms, and nurses shouting orders at each other. I hear, “code!” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happens next.

Another nurse thunders past me. She stops, just in time – perhaps noticing my tear-streaked face. “Go to the waiting room,” she says. “You don’t need to see this.”

“Will –,” I croak. “Will he be okay?”

The nurse winces as I speak. She gives me a sad, tired frown, with sad, tired eyes.

“I can’t promise you anything, girl. Just go.”

I move in slow motion and I finally do as I’m told. The hospital smells on the way out, just as it did on the way in.

Through the hurt, through the pain – through the fear of what’s coming – another thought takes hold in my mind. It’s like a seed, germinating there, sprouting roots.

Once it has sprouted, it’s lodged there. Stuck. I can’t stop thinking about it.

I can’t save dad. But I can save someone else’s. I can’t let Tilly lose her father like I’m about to lose mine. Even if that means that I won’t be by my father’s bedside when he passes. Dad would understand. He’d want me to be the daughter he raised, not the girl I turned into.

I hope.

Because I know how to stop Landon Winchester.