Ofia Begum Ali

No one bothers to call an interpreter.

And I know my father.

He nods his head the way immigrants do when the sounds feel familiar, but the meaning never lands.

He catches words like his name and his birthday and hopes the rest will work itself out.

And I hope that he misunderstood the diagnosis, or maybe we caught it early.

But the truth is, I am terrified that this one time I am not there to translate

is a moment everything falls apart.

So at the hospital, I wait hours for updates.

Visiting hours end and nothing changes.

So I leave the hospital and I start working on the assignment.

It felt safer to work on a legal memo than to imagine a life without my father.

And I don't sleep.

The next morning, I set an alarm to call the hospital every hour.

And every hour, the nurse gives me the same response.

The doctor will call you.

But that call never comes.

By the time I submit my assignment, my exhaustion turns into anger.

And at first, I feel helpless.

But then I realized, I've been doing this my whole life.

And then I pull out my phone and I start Googling hospital policies.