The sun is just creeping over the horizon when I can sneak out of the hospital and down to my car to grab my phone.

It was a long night. Once Dad was transferred, he’d woken up a little, but was disoriented. I was uncomfortable leaving him alone, even with nurses twenty feet away and watching the monitors.

I stayed by his bedside until he fell into a fitful sleep. I drifted off soon after, uncomfortably perched in a chair beside him until the shift-change nurse woke us both to take his vitals.

Turning on my phone, I see it’s been blowing up all night. I’ve got several missed calls from Jacob, one from Kat . . . but more worrisome, at least two dozen calls from Susannah and the station number.

I rub the back of my neck, not sure what I’m going to do. I knew I’d likely get shit for bailing on the show with no notice, but what the hell did they want me to do? My dad was having a heart attack.

If Susannah couldn’t handle things, there’s plenty of archived shows they could air if need be. We already do that on our two-night off each week and listeners seem to like the classics. If Suz was in a lurch, she could’ve just punched play on one of those.

Yeah, shitty on my part to duck like I did, but a necessary deal when there’s a medical emergency. I decide to give Jacob a call first. He doesn’t call often so it must have been important for him to call multiple times. Kat was probably just checking in to tell me everything was going okay and she was being safe. I won’t wake her up with the bad news just yet.

Besides, Jacob will want to know. He and Dad got pretty friendly back in my college days, and Jacob really took a liking to my father, often hanging out at the house when the lifestyle of being a superstar student-athlete with a professional future got to be a bit too much to deal with.

I hit dial and lean against my car, yawning as the cold morning air wakes me up.

As soon as Jacob picks up the line however, all sleepiness is driven from me when he yells. “What the fuck, man?!”

“Hey bro, I know it’s early as fuck, you just don’t normally call multiple times like that. Besides, aren’t you usually up at this hour?”

“What the hell are you doing? The show last night? How could you do that to that girl?”

Oh hell, what happened on the show? Did the guest go apeshit or something? “Do what? I’m at the hospital with dad. He had a heart attack, man. He’s gonna be okay but if you’re in town or close, I’m sure he’d love it if you could come see him.”

Jacob quiets, and when he speaks up, he sounds more like his normal self. “Holy shit man, is he okay?”

I sigh, purging some of the fear that’s been roiling in my gut all night. “Yeah, it was some scary shit there for a bit, but he called in time. He knew right away something was wrong, so he got help within minutes. It was serious, but he’s gonna be okay.”

“I get that, and I don’t mean to be insensitive, but I gotta ask. What about the show last night? You didn’t air the recordings?”

“Recordings?” I ask, confused. “What recordings? I ran out the door as soon as Dad called, figured Susannah would handle it.”

I’m getting an ugly feeling in the pit of my stomach as the silence on the other end of the line stretches out, and I’m nervous as hell waiting for an answer. “Fuck, Derrick. Susannah, she played . . ..”

“What?” I ask, nearly panic stricken at this point. I don’t need this shit, I so don’t need this shit right now. “Just say it.”

“She spent most of the first two hours playing recordings of you and Kat for the audience to comment on. It sounded like you were in the studio, talking with her, answering her questions and even laughed and said ‘let’s hear it.’ Then, after that, it was you and Kat. Uh, getting down and dirty.”

“What are you talking about? Are you sure, did you hear it yourself? How in the fuck are there even recordings of that?”

“You didn’t record them? I mean, that doesn’t sound like something you’d do, but how else?”

I feel the world start to spin, and I lean against my car, planting my hand on the roof to make sure I don’t pass out. “No, I didn’t record them. How bad was it?”

“It was bad. I’m not gonna repeat it all to you, you should know, but it was bad. I mean, I’ve seen pornos that had less explicit dialogue.”

Oh dear god. “What? How do those even exist!? I didn’t record them. I have to go, Jacob. I have to find Kat, find out what the fuck happened. Can you come to the hospital and sit with dad for a little bit?”

“I’ll be there this afternoon. The team’s doing okay, I can take a day off for personal time. Hell, training staff keeps telling me to rest my shoulder anyway. I’m on my way, brother. Go get your woman and fix this. From what it sounds like, you might want a lawyer. If you do, I know a guy.”

“Uh, right. We’ll figure that out later though. Thanks, I appreciate it.”

I hang up and run back upstairs to Dad’s room, trying to figure out what to do as my mind races. Susannah could totally use sound bites of me on-air to make it sound like I was in the studio. We do that all the time for popular jokes so we can replay them and laugh at ourselves. But this is wholly different, she made it sound like I agreed with airing my own sex tapes, for fucks sake. She might have ruined everything . . . with work, and more importantly, with Kat.

“Derrick?”

I stop, realizing I’ve been pacing the floor and turn to see Dad. He’s woken up, looking better than he did last night, but he’s worried. “Everything okay?” I ask him.

He reaches over, and uses the buttons on his bed to elevate himself to a near-seated position. “Son, you look worse than me, like the world just came crashing down on your head. What’s going on? Besides the obvious.”

I come over to his bed, feeling like I really shouldn’t be burdening him. But, looking in his eyes, I realize that maybe that’s exactly what he needs right now. To not feel like a burden himself, but to be able to be that strong man who helped me so many times before in my life. “I don’t know what happened but I think my entire relationship with Kat just got really messed up last night.”

“Kat’s the young woman you told me about,” Dad says, nodding. “The one you say you want to marry?”

I nod, swallowing. “And work, but I don’t care about work . . . just Kat.” I give him the fast and dirty of what I know, which admittedly isn’t much. I try to leave out some of the graphic details, as if it were just a little dirty talk. “And then last night Susannah apparently aired some recordings of my chats with Kat. What the hell am I supposed to do?”

Dad nods, speaking slowly in that way he does when he’s handing out his wisdom and wants to make sure you hear his best advice in your heart, not just your ears. “You love her?”

I nod. “Yes, of course. I love her so much.”

“I know I raised you better than to disrespect any woman like that, so I won’t even ask if you had anything to do with it.”

It’s a statement, but there’s a threat in his tone and I can tell he’s fishing for me to put his mind at ease. “Stay in bed, old man. I swear I had nothing to do with this, I’m just as horrified and pissed as she probably is. I never recorded any of it. How it got recorded, I have no idea.”

He nods, his eyes flinty with furious anger and righteous determination. “Then you need to go fix this. I’ll be fine right here in this bed, I ain’t going nowhere. Make your mom and me proud, son, just like you always have.”

“Thanks, Dad. Jacob said he’d stop by this afternoon though. He’s going to take a personal day and sit with you as long as you want.”

I lean in and give him another hug, knowing that I could’ve lost him yesterday and I’m so damn thankful for the man he is and the man he taught me how to be. Whatever the hell just happened, I’m going full throttle to fix this shit.