“I’ll be in the living room,” the man said, already retreating. He left the door open and the silence to fill the space he left.
Nobody moved. I looked at Dmitri, and he looked back at me. “Aren’t you going to greet him?”
I stepped forward.
The room carried the faint, sterile smell of antiseptic, and I registered the figure on the bed. He lay with white sheets pulled to his chest, and an oxygen mask covered the lower half of his face. A drip line ran from his arm to the stand beside the bed. His chest moved in slow, the rise and fall of someone being breathed for rather than breathing.
I didn’t understand what I was looking at. I moved closer because understanding required proximity, and the closer I got, the more his face assembled itself into someone I knew. He became familiar with each step until I reached the edge of the bed. The world around me shrank to just him.
My breath stopped.
“Dad?” The word left me before I chose it.
My hands trembled at my sides. I reached toward him and pulled back, the fear of touching him stopping me, as if he would vanish if I touched him, and I would stand in an empty room.
“Dad.”
I turned to Dmitri, who leaned against the doorframe, watching me. I searched his face for anything that would tell me this was true, that I was awake and standing beside my father.
“It’s my father,” I whispered, and the words felt breakable in my mouth.
A tear ran down before I could catch it. I faced my father again, and this time my hand moved to his shoulder with gentleness. Up close, the damage was undeniable. Bruises spread across his face in deep, mottled patches. A bandage wrapped his head, stained at the edges. The shape of his face, which I carried in memory through every year he was gone, confirmed it.
It was my father. And he was alive.
This was the man I waited for. The one I searched for in strangers’ faces on crowded streets, in the backs of buses, and across restaurant floors. He was the father I promised Cole would come back. I almost let go of it and convinced myself that letting go was the practical thing to do.
And here he was, breathing. He was warm when I closed my fingers around his hand.
My knees gave out, and I dropped beside the bed.
“He’s alive,” I sobbed, and the words broke open what I had been holding for so long. The nights I held myself together for Cole when I was coming apart at the seams. Every dark thought I never said out loud because saying it made it real. Every morning, I woke up and kept going because someone had to, and it had to be me.
“I missed you.” My voice fractured against the edge of the mattress where I pressed my forehead. “What happened to you?” My fingers moved over his face, tracing the bruised skin with gentleness. “I thought we lost you. I thought I would never—”
The rest of it dissolved into tears. I didn’t know when it shifted from crying to laughing. At some point, they felt the same, both of them true.
I pulled back and turned to Dmitri. A powerful push moved me before my mind caught up. I crossed the room and walked into him. My arms wrapped around him and held on, my face against his chest.
He brought me here, and he had no idea what this meant. He didn’t know what it felt like to see my father again after all those years.
“Is this a hug?” he asked. I tightened my arms and nodded against his chest. “While you are crying?”
A sound left me that was half a sob and half a laugh. “Happy tears,” I managed, my voice still breaking between words. “My father is alive. I am so happy.”
Dmitri went quiet for a while before his hands moved to my back and settled there. He held me, one hand moving in a slow touch on my back. He embraced me with a certainty that leaves no room for the thing you’re afraid of. I stayed in it and didn’t think about what it meant. I let it be exactly what it was.
When I finally pulled back and looked at him, reality began reassembling itself. We came here to prove I knew Luigi, yet it was my father here.
“I don’t understand,” I said, still catching my breath. “Who is Luigi?” I searched his face. “Wait.” My heart skipped a beat. “Is my father Luigi?”
Dmitri scoffed, the sound landing somewhere between amusement and disbelief. “You’re clueless.” His hand moved to my shoulder, rubbing me slowly. “You eavesdropped. You should have pieced it together.”
“I heard you were keeping me because I knew Luigi, and that the old man said Luigi took someone important from him.” I shook my head. “That’s all.”
Dmitri tilted his head, studying me. “And who do you think the important person was?”
“I don’t know.” I turned back to my father, taking in the state he was in again. “What happened to him?”
