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I grunt, struck by the irony.
After all the times his words wounded me, now it’s my turn to pay him back.
The woman looks at her watch, then offers me a polite smile. “I’ll be at the nursing station where we just came from if you need anything. Take all the time you need.”
Avery and I stand there for a long moment once we’re alone. My feet feel rooted to the floor. My lungs seem to be drying up, making it difficult to get air.
“Are you okay?” Avery’s touch is feather light on my cheek. “If you’re not ready to do this now, we can come back—”
“I’m ready.” I brush my lips against hers in a brief kiss as I release her hand.
“I love you,” she says, clutching my face in her gentle palms. “I’m going to be right out here the whole time.”
My nod feels shaky. So does my hand as I reach for the latch on the door. The tangle of scars turn white as I grip the cold metal lever and push the panel open.
The room is dark. So fucking quiet.
An empty bed sits closest to the door, but I hardly notice i
t as I approach the other one—the one containing a shriveled shape swathed in white sheets and a thin wheat-colored blanket.
I’m not going to lie, the sight of my father lying there is a shock.
The once tall, muscular man with jet hair like my own is so far diminished I never would have recognized him. Matted gray hair covers a skull cloaked in spotted, yellowed skin. Eyes I know to be the same bright blue as mine are closed in sleep, and the mouth that used to snarl such explosive, ugly things to me now sags on the left side, lasting evidence of the stroke that sent him to this place five years ago.
I am struck by his incapacitation, by how small he seems compared to the raging monster from my youth. His unmoving body is beyond thin, the long legs that used to carry him so agilely on the deck of his fishing boat now look skeletal beneath the sheets, incapable of supporting even his diminished weight. Stretched out along his sides, his arms are mottled with the bruising of old age and blood-thinning medicines.
The powerful fists that struck me only once—that last night I was in his house—lay gnarled and bony at the ends of his wrists like useless claws.
“Jesus Christ.”
An astonishing sense of sorrow swamps me as I stand beside his sleeping form. I don’t want to feel sympathy for him. After all, he never had any for me. He never had anything in his heart for me except animosity.
And doubt.
This last thing was the one that cut me the deepest. It’s the thing that moves me to speak to him now, even though he’s snoring quietly, fully asleep.
“Are you in pain, old man?” My voice is low and hoarse with unwanted emotion as I stare down at him in the bed. “I wanted to think you would be. I thought I wanted to see you suffering.”
I take a breath and I’m shocked to hear the catch in my throat. I don’t want to feel anything for the uncaring bastard. I want to look at him with the same detachment, the same neglect that he always showed me.
But I can’t.
“You were my father, you son of a bitch,” I whisper thickly. “You were supposed to be there for me. You were supposed to protect me.”
I swallow past the knot of anguish and rage that I’ve been carrying inside me since I was an eleven-year-old boy. Its bitter taste fills my mouth now, as acrid as poison.
“You were supposed to love me. Goddamn you, Dad. You should’ve kept me safe from him.”
At that choked accusation, my father stirs on the mattress. His eyes stay closed, but I can see that his mind is wading through the cobwebs of sleep. Somewhere inside that shriveled shell of a man, he knows how he failed me.
Not only as a child, when I admired him and wanted to be like him. But later too. After my mother was gone and I was a grieving kid in need of kindness. So hungry for comfort I would have turned to anyone . . . and did, only to learn it came at an unthinkable cost.
I needed my dad years later, when I was a self-destructive, messed up teen. He wasn’t there for me then, either. Always pushing me away. Always ensuring I only had cause to avoid him, to hate him.
Hot tears streak down my face. I swipe at them angrily, furious with myself that once again—even after all this time—my father has reduced me to the weakling he always believed I was.
“Fuck.”
