(TW: mentions of being drunk but not in great detail.)

——

*beep*

*beep*

*beep*

The beeping is rhythmic. Calming.

His eyes flutter and immediately squeezed shut when the light was too much. What? Where is he?

“Sir? Can you hear me?”

He nods, his eyes still closed. “You were brought in last night,” the voice explains.

“From what?” He mumbles, unable to clearly ask the question. His mind is still jumbled and disoriented.

“A car crash,” she says simply.

Then it hits him like a truck. Which is sort of ironic.

Distorted reality. The drunk vision. He crashed. Because he was drunk.

Clamoring to sit up and reach to the side where the phone laid, the nurse gently pushes him back to a laying position. “My wife. My kids.”

“She knows. She’s here but went to the cafeteria with your kids to eat.”

Relaxing a bit, he settles, but he knows that he won’t be able to relax long. This is his fault. Something has to change.

“Do you know? Was anyone else brought in with me?” He takes the chance and questions.

His nurse’s eyebrow raises. He goes to clarify, “Did I hurt anyone else?”

She meets his eyes, her gaze sharp. “No. Single car accident.”

Sighing in relief, he fully slumps back.

The nurse does what she does, messing with his IV and bandages. When she’s seemingly satisfied, she gives him a pointed look and comments, “Your kids are cute. Your family is beautiful.” Then she walks out the door, sanitizing her her hands as she passes through his doorway.

He knows the unsaid words there. People aren’t as subtle as they think, or maybe she isn’t trying to be.

She’s pointing out how he almost messed up his family. His kids. He already has.

Where does he go from here?

Rehab didn’t work before. But this can’t happen again. He was lucky.

“Daddy!” His youngest daughter skips up to the bed. “I said to Mommy the moment we leave, you’d wake up!”

“You were right, honey,” his wife says with the affection that he loves she has for their kids. She’s pushing the wheelchair of their oldest who has special needs and has the mind of a baby.

His youngest doesn’t know. Or doesn’t understand. How much can you really figure out at seven years old?

But when he looks into his middle daughter’s eyes, he sees a shadow of a much older girl. No matter how much his wife tries to shield them, she understands.

Something twists in his gut. She shields them from _him_.

“How are you feeling?” His middle daughter asks, holding the hand of her little sister, so she doesn’t try to climb the bed.

“The nurses are doing a good job fixing me up. I’m lucky.”

His wife shoots him a look where he knows that she agrees with that statement. That he is always been lucky. So far. Who knows when that luck will run out?

“You’re like Meowy! Nine lives. Well now eight,” his littlest exclaims, excitedly pointing to his sister’s stuffed cat.

Gazing at his wife taking care of their oldest daughter and his middle child watching his little girl, he knows that his nurse is right. Everyone who has over told him this is right.

“I don’t think I should chance any more lives.”