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"Wow, looks like someone else can't stand you anymore, huh?" I taunted, nodding in the direction the woman had disappeared.
"Missy, what the hell are you doing?"
"Relax, Daddy. It's not even weed."
My comment seemed to throw him for a moment. His expression wavered between irritation and the realization that he had just been outplayed by his teenage daughter.
"Missy, you're sixteen. You're not supposed to be smoking," he tried to assert his authoritative tone, which undoubtedly worked wonders with the interns who adored him.
"Oh, really?" I retorted, clicking the lighter in vain, my tone dripping with sarcasm.
"Great observation. Do you have any more life wisdom for me, or is that it for the next twelve months?"
After a moment of hesitation, he sighed and sat down next to me without waiting for an invitation. Defiantly, I moved further away.
"I didn't offer you a seat."
"Did you know that smokers are 15 to 30 times more likely to get lung cancer than nonsmokers? That smokers are twice as likely to die from cardiovascular disease?"
Dad had always been the type to back up his opinions with facts and figures.
But I wasn't going to give him the satisfaction.
"Did you know that the suicide rate among mentally unstable children increases by 70% when a parent leaves the family?"
I shot back with a provocative suggestion.
"Let's see which statistic is more deadly."
Dad looked at me, a combination of pain and resignation in his deep blue eyes.
For a moment, I saw the man he once was, the father who carried me on his shoulders through our living room.
The father who taught me how to ice skate on the frozen pond in Central Park
The father who had always made the eternal fireworks in my head a little quieter.
The father who somehow always got me through the night, even when I thought I wouldn't make it.
"Come inside. It's pouring."
"Wow. Were you able to decipher the weather forecast all by yourself, or did someone help you?"
"It's cold and you're soaked to the bone. That's not healthy, Missy," he said, now in a tone that sounded almost pleading.
"No, I'm on strike, and this bench is my picket line. I'm not moving an inch until Mom gets back and we catch the first available cab to the hotel. Or until the weather decides to be merciful. Whichever comes first."
"This is nuts, Melissa."
"I know it is, Dad. But look, sitting out here in the rain and freezing is still more pleasant than doing what you want just because you say so. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a strike to lead."
"You're just as stubborn as your mother," he muttered before getting up and disappearing into the hospital with a shrug.
So there I sat, in the Seattle rain, surrounded by the silence of an abandoned hospital courtyard, waiting for a reconciliation that might never come.
It was a perfect moment of calm before the storm, a brief pause in a life that had become far too complicated.
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