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I shoved my bag into the upper storage compartment, then squeezed by to my seat.
There was what looked like a businessman on one side, and a teenage girl on the other. All things considered, cramped plane rides I could manage. I’d done it enough in my career. Taking out a pair of noise-canceling headphones, I turned up some classic rock and nodded back off.
By the time we landed, I’d almost gotten a full night’s sleep. An hour and a half at the airport, and another three in the plane. I wouldn’t consider myself refreshed at all, but I would survive the next twenty hours or so until I’d be able to sleep again.
Outside the airport I got another taxi to the hospital, unwilling to think too hard about the city just outside the windows that I’d grown up in. Nostalgia and grief swept through me as we went, and I found myself fighting back the pain of losing my mother, and the agony of having nobody left but my no good father. Why was I here again?
The car stopped in front of the hospital, so I paid and got out, looking up at the building, nothing but brick and windows. It looked even shittier than I remembered.
Putting on my CO face, I strode into the hospital with an air of confidence I didn’t feel, and approached the reception desk.
“I’m here to see my father,” I told the woman.
She looked up at me like she was bored, blinking at me.
“Am I supposed to know who your father is?” she countered.
“Joseph Kane.”
She frowned and took her sweet time getting the name pulled up in the computer.
“And you are?” she drawled in annoyance.
“His son,” I all but hissed.
“Don't you go getting a tone with me,” she bit back. “What's your name?”
Biting back a retort, I pulled out my wallet and shoved my driver's license at her. “Sergeant Ashton Joseph Kane. Joseph Kane is my father.”
She took the ID, stared at it, then flicked it back to me.
“Well, it looks like you’re on his list of emergency contacts, but we don’t got no number for you. We need to add that so you can be informed in the future.”
I rattled off my number for her, and she got the information down, hopefully, then told me his room number.
“Thank you,” I finally said, shoving my license back into my wallet before slipping it into my front pocket.
It was a lot harder to steal in the front pocket than the back.
So, up the elevator I went to room 1013.
I stood outside of the door for a good four or five minutes, arguing with myself on whether I should go in or not. I didn’t owe the man shit. He was a horrible human being to both Mom and me, but at the same time, he was still my father. It had been over twenty years since I’d seen him, and there was nothing he could do to me anymore. When it came down to it, I wasn’t there for him. I was there for me. I needed my own closure so that when he died, I didn't feel regret for the relationship that we never had, as ill-placed as that feeling would be.
Reaching out my hand, I stopped dead in my tracks as the door opened, taking the knob out of reach.
“Oh, thank God,” a woman said, voice tinged with a British accent. “I had hoped you’d come.”
Looking up from her expensive leather boots to the designer purse on her shoulder, I looked into the eyes of a woman that appeared to be a female version of my father. All light brown hair and green eyes that matched mine.
“Who are you?” I asked her, looking over her shoulder at the legs in view, covered in a stained, white knit blanket.
“Of Course your father didn't tell you anything about me. Well, I’m his sister, Felicity. His twin, actually.”
Twin? What the actual fuck?
“My dad doesn’t have a twin,” I groused.
“He sure does. We had a falling out a long time ago, when we were just fresh out of college. Joe came here to Chicago to get away from everyone, and I moved away to London with my new husband. We haven’t talked in years, though I still send him Christmas cards with my number in it. I suppose he used it as an emergency contact, because I was the first person they called when he ended up here.”
