He tried to reassure me.

“I’ll be okay, kiddo. It’s just a cold. You focus on your final exams.”

But I knew he was lying.

I balanced my last semester of high school with helping him to the bathroom, feeding him soup, and managing his mountain of medications. His face grew thinner each morning, his skin paler, and the panic inside me grew. What would happen to us?

One evening, as I helped him back into bed, he said something that unsettled me deeply.

Shaking from the short walk, he fixed his eyes on mine.

“Lila, I need to tell you something.”

“Later, Grandpa. You’re exhausted. Rest.”

But “later” never came.

When he died in his sleep, my world shattered.

I had just graduated high school. Instead of feeling hopeful, I stood suspended in a terrifying place between grief and adulthood. I stopped eating properly. I stopped sleeping.