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The man in front of me was a shrunken version of that, his dark hair mostly silver now and his skin a sickly shade of yellow as we stared at each other for the first time in over fifteen years.
“Orla, what in the hell were you thinking,” Finneas snapped, his brown eyes which were more like mine than I cared to admit, widening as he took me in.
“You always talk about making amends, and well since you can’t travel to do it, I’ve brought the amends to you.” Orla, clearly not reading the temperature of the room, gave us all silly little jazz hands.
“Hello, Da,” my voice was smaller than I wanted it to be and I felt stupid for it. I cleared my throat and corrected myself. “Finneas.”
Silence hung in the room and it became more awkward by the second before Wiz, bless his heart, stepped in. “Hello, sir, I’m your daughter’s mate Jae-Sun Park. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Is it?” Finneas asked, crossing his bruised, IV-and-cord-filled arms over his chest.
Orla, finally seeming to realize that this meeting wasn’t going to be all tears and hugs, clapped her hands. “I think we should give these two a couple of minutes to catch up, Mr. Park, can I show you to the vending machines?”
Wiz shot me a look like he was asking if I was okay with that and he only left when I gave him a single nod.
Once they were gone I turned to face him again and we continued to stare at one another.
“You’ve grown,” Finneas finally said, breaking our game of mental chicken. “You look just like your mam.”
He turned to the little bedside table that was absolutely packed full of pictures of her—and of me too I realized with a jolt.
“I hate you,” the words tumbled out of me and I thought they shocked us both.
Finneas’s shoulders sank. “I know it and have since you left.”
Anger filled me so acutely that I was dizzy with it. “I left because you were a drunk who liked to bully women and children and then you didn’t even try to better yourself when people took your child away.”
I loved the dads and my family, but in my most faded memories I could remember us being happy together before alcohol got in the way.
His jaw tightened as he looked away from me with obvious guilt. “I am sorry for it. I couldn’t handle it when your mam left and even less after she died. By the time someone peeled me off of the floor of a pub you were already eighteen and I figured you’d want nothing to do with me.”
“I don’t want anything to do with you. I just wanted to come here and tell you that you are the reason why I can’t seem to function as a fucking adult—why every single one of my relationships seems to end in a blaze of gods damned glory. You were broken and because of that, instead of getting help or anything, you broke me and you broke Mam.” I lobbed the words at him like they were projectiles, my vision blurring slightly as I sucked in a deep breath.
“Ciara I—” The machines around Finneas started to beep wildly and suddenly nurses were hustling into the room.
“We need to treat him and you need to leave,” Orla said, guiding me to the door, her cheerful expression gone as she slammed the door shut behind me.
Wiz was nowhere to be found and my world continued to spin, the yellow walls of the hallway becoming too bright.
Someone—I think it was Wiz—called my name but I was already slumping to the ground as blackness edged into my vision and I was gone.
“Well, you didn’t hit your head when you went down, though looking at this nasty cut I wouldn’t be surprised if you’re maybe experiencing some concussion-like symptoms. You said you didn’t get it checked out when it happened?”
After I’d passed out, Wiz and one of the hospice doctors had hustled me into an empty exam room.
Wiz was hovering just behind me, his expression stony as the doctor shined a light in my eyes.
“I didn’t, but the paramedic just said it was a cut,” I told him, still feeling shaky like someone had tossed me into a blender.
“Hmm,” the doctor said under his breath, as he tucked the pen light back into his coat pocket. “When was the date of your last period?”
I frowned. “I don’t have them on my current birth control.”
“And do you have unprotected sex? Without a condom I mean.”
My face warmed because, frankly, we never used condoms. My birth control was touted as one of the most effective on the market and I’d never had any trouble with it before.
“I’m not pregnant, doctor.”
