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Yet I stayed.
I rested my elbows on my knees and dropped my head.
My mother would’ve wanted me here. And that was part of my motivation. I wanted to please someone who was never coming back in case she was watching from somewhere above.
As much as I loved my mother, pleasing her wasn’t enough.
I couldn’t describe the reason. It was just rooted within. I didn’t want my father to be a bad guy.
He was. I wouldn’t deny it. But the memories of when I was young were strong. Then he wasn’t awful to us. Distant at times.Notthe unfeeling monster he’d become.
I was the one who ultimately cut off communication . . . because he’d forced me to. We’d reached an impasse that we hadn’t gotten past in almost twenty years. All the bitterness and hurt hadn’t evaporated because he was in critical condition.
I certainly wasn’t rethinking my actions. There were some things I could’ve done differently, but I wasn’t the one in the wrong.
I’d wished more times than I could count that things would’ve been better between us.
Watching the monitor giving him life didn’t erase the things he’d done. It didn’t earn him my automatic forgiveness.
It had earned him some of my time.
The nurses hadn’t allowed me to sit in his room until a few hours ago. Automatically, I’d followed them when I wasn’t sure I wanted to be there. They assumed I was a dutiful, heartbroken son, desperate for his father to make a recovery.
I wasn’t sure how I felt.
Was there something in my nature with a need to save people?Is that why I’m here?
“Want some coffee, honey?” A nurse spoke low as she entered with a Styrofoam cup in her hands.
“Thanks.”
She offered me a couple packs of sugar and powdered creamer. I accepted all of it, though I wasn’t sure I could handle anything to eat or drink right now.
She fussed about my father, checking the machines and his vitals. I watched without really seeing, exhausted from the bits of rest I caught every once in a while.
I should leave. Lincoln would be here soon. Besides, my father had no idea I was by his side anyway.
“Talk to him,” the nurse said. “It helps more than you can imagine.” She pulled the door closed behind her when she left.
Talk to him.
There was nothing to say. It wouldn’t make me feel better to get any of this off my chest because it wouldn’t change things. Not just because he wasn’t listening. Even if he were, he was who he was.
“Am I dead?”
I jerked my head up at the sound of his scratchy voice. It was as if he hadn’t spoken in a year.
“No.”
“If you’re here, I have to be or hell has frozen over.” His dark eyes didn’t have the sharp glint they usually held.
“I was thinking the same thing.” I rubbed my hands up and down my thighs.
“You look like shit.”
I gripped my knees. “That’s really what you want to say to me after almost dying?”
His color was off. He’d been out for several days, yet he didn’t look frail. Just maybe not as mighty as usual.
