Thankfully she was there to save me, my best friend. Funny how you never know how much you're loved until a crisis snatches everything else away. What's left standing is what's real and true.

The whole drive there she laughed with me, to keep me sane, I don't even remember what we said. She never let me panic.

He called the ambulance. I think it's heartburn, he said, not too bad. . .I just need to be sure. When I got home there were remnants of the paramedics labors to keep my dad alive: papers, needle covers, gauze all over. It looked like a battle zone, and it terrified me. I couldn't lose him yet.

The hospital emergency room looked like all ER's, loud and crowded. He didn't look like my dad sitting there on that bed, inhaling oxygen from the tubes in his nose.

We stayed all night, just to be sure. It was mild, the doctor said, no damage this time. . . . This time. It won't be long now, and he'll be home. It won't be long and we'll lose him, I think.

He almost didn't make it to see me graduate college. Why would he rob himself of the pride of seeing me finish what he worked so hard to give me? He will miss so many things if he doesn't learn now, his third chance. We'll see if he does it. Will he let himself go again, smoking two packs a day? Will he make me do without someone to walk me down the aisle when I get married, to be grandfather to the children I might have, to be a husband for my mother and a father to my brother and me? Lord knows we still need him, can't live without him. I wonder what it will take for him to see that. There is only so much I can do, so much I can say, to let him know that he cannot go yet, however hard it is to stop himself. Don't make me plan your funeral at 21 years old, daddy, like your father did to you. I will not let you leave me.