The Sign-In Sheet Says Six

My dad's in surgery and my brother's out in the corridor on the phone with his girlfriend, pacing by the vending machine. I can hear him through the doors he thinks are closed. He's telling her it's been just him holding things down all week, taking dad to the pre-op appointments, staying till the nurses kick him out.

I don't go out there and say anything.

I've signed the visitor log every night for six nights. It's right there on the clipboard at the nurses' station, my name under his, same handwriting getting worse each night. I know because I checked it twice tonight, once for no reason, once because some ugly small part of me wanted proof.

He's not lying, exactly. He believes it. He's the one who called the surgeon, who knows the drug names. I'm just the one who showed up and sat there.

I keep telling myself family isn't a scoreboard, that this isn't the night to care who gets remembered as the one who was there. Then I think about next year, at Christmas, whoever tells this story first is the one it happened to.

I don't walk out there. I let him have the version where it was just him. I go back to the clipboard, find my name again, and don't show anyone.