Gordo returned to his room and dialed the hospital a town over. "Hello?" Miranda answered in a small voice he couldn't call her own.

"Miranda."

"Gordo?"

"Yeah. Miranda, I want to help you find your dad."

"What? How?"

"I don't know yet. I...uh... I just want to help you."

"Don't worry about it."

"What? What does that mean?"

"I let her win."

Gordo furrowed his brows and let a silence wedge between them. Then he whispered, "Miranda...no..."

"I'm too tired. Goodnight"

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He returned to the hospital a minute or so later than he had yesterday and approached room 217. A nurse stood in the doorway of the room and smiled at him as she wheeled out her cart. He stuck his head before his body. "Hey," he greeted in a solemn tone he accompanied with a smile. Miranda lay in her bed with her head titled up towards the television. "How are you feeling?" he added when she didn't respond. He sat on the edge of her bed and peered into the stillness of her face. "Miranda?"

She slowly turned her face to his, noticed him, and turned it back. "My mother would kill you if she saw you here."

Gordo furrowed his brows. Is that all she can say?

"Uh... good, I guess. I'm not here to see her." In her silence, he looked around the room, trying to avoid the features that were now peeking out at him. Miranda's brown eyes were large and vacant. He had never seen them like that before- almost as if they couldn't contain anything around her-couldn't contain him. "You're just going to let her win?" he asked, but Miranda wasn't listening.

"And it comes with a glorious gift. Where else could you get this kind of quality for only 9.95?" shrieked the TV.

"Why are you acting like this?" he mumbled. "Miranda look at me. Miranda." He turned her by the chin and saw her swimming in her own pupils.

The same nurse of earlier poked her head into the room with a concerned expression. "I'm sorry she's not herself today. She's just taken some new medication. She'll get used to it in no time."

Gordo looked back at Miranda. He was the background again.

"Order now! Now! Now!"

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Gordo lit a cigarette as he stepped off the bus. "I guess I can stand losing her again..."

He made his way to the beginning of his block but turned off.

"I saw you here." Her face was twisted in her own anguish. Her lips was trembling. "I didn't know what to think." Then she shivered and her eyes snapped open. "Those eyes weighed me down."

He treaded the walk to her house indifferently until he saw the car in the driveway.

As Gordo stood on the edge of the Sanchez property, Henry Sanchez stalked out of the house and got in his car.

"Henry!" Mrs. Sanchez screamed from the doorway as her husband careened down the street."Henry, don't!"

Gordo shuffled down the block, hopefully unseen.

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He laid in his bed every night after that. He didn't make any pre-emptive visits to Matt. He didn't tiptoe around Mrs. Sanchez. He swallowed his feelings and his hopes for heroism, and kept to himself. What could he do? "I want to find your father? What was I thinking?" The constant idealism, the coddling. Miranda didn't need him. He needed her.

For a week, he committed to his old activities: "light" chain-smoking or wee morning hours drunk on the bridge. He thought only about himself and his odors.

"Gordo..."

He turned around to meet the voice that caught him on his morning trudge home.

"Lizzie." She looked angelic. "Ironic," Gordo thought.

"I want to um, apologize," she said, twisting at her manicured fingertips.

His bloodshot eyes crinkled. "Apologize for what?"

"Wait- you don't know?"

He ran a rand through his slick hair and rubbed his nose."Know what, Lizzie?"

"About Miranda."

Gordo was almost thrown off his axis. "What about Miranda?"

She peered at him in disbelief. "What do you mean 'what about Miranda?' The whole town's been talking about it? Jeez Gordo, do you live under a rock?" She croaked on the last comment.

"Lizzie, just tell me!"

"Miranda's mom... She was insane."

"Lizzie, you're not helping."

"She had a disorder- Much...Much, God... I don't know. But she had Miranda committed and medicated to get Mr. Sanchez back. When he found out that she was in the hospital, he came back to town, but he didn't want anything to do with her."

"So he took Miranda out of the hospital?"

"Well... yeah, but... um... Her mom...she... tried to poison her in the hospital."

Gordo felt his heart pound wildly against his chest. "She poisoned Miranda?"

Lizzie looked down uncomfortably. "My mother helped her."

"Oh my God."

"I'm sorry."

He scoffed in his throat. "It's a little too late for that."

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Gordo wheezed at the edge of the Sanchez steps. This was it! He was dissheveled and foul but he was here, and if she had been thinking of him as he had been thinking of her, then it wouldn't matter. She wouldn't care.

He walked to the door and rung the bell. Was Mrs. Sanchez gone by now?

Henry answered the door. "Well hello there, Gordo," Mr. Sanchez said somberly.

"Hi, Mr. Sanchez. Is Miranda here?" Gordo asked eagerly.

"Yeah, she's uh... right in here. I've moved her room downstairs."

"'I,' sir?" He asked as Mr. Sanchez moved aside and let him in.

"The Mrs. and I aren't together anymore."

"Oh."

As he and Mr. Sanchez made their way down the hall, Gordo grew anxious. What would she say when he professed his love to her? Even if she rejected him, it would be okay. She was home now. He had a reason to continue.

"How long will you be?" her father asked.

"Oh... uh... I'm not sure?"

Her father pushed back the door to this new room, bringing Miranda into view.

Gordo pressed his teeth into his lip and suddenly found that there was just not enough air to support him.

She was stone-faced and slack, a victim of brain damage from suffocation.

"No!" It came out in a sob as he found her hand. "Miranda. Oh... God, Miranda..." He shed all of his tears onto her hand as she stared blankly into the ceiling, an utter abyss of solitude.

"Miranda..."