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“Fuck,” I snarl, wrenching the door to my father’s room open. It bounces off the wall and a nurse inside startles, releasing a shriek. The clipboard she’s holding drops to the floor with a sharp smack and I huff at how easily she scares. Ridiculous.
The bitter antiseptic scent, laden throughout the hospital, is heavier here. It burns the inside of my nostrils and I snarl wordlessly as a barrage of late night and early morning memories flood me. The room and its contents spin, morphing into something far more dated—twenty-one years ago to be exact. A young woman’s frail body is lying on a stark white bed with the rail up on one side. Two roughly textured blankets cover her from toes to chin, yet she’s still shivering uncontrollably. She’s trapped beneath a web of wires and tubes connecting her to various machines.
I reach my hand out, but the memory shifts. Now, a kid—barely sixteen—is kneeling at her bedside, clutching her hand like it’s a life-raft and he’s lost at sea. A rainfall of tears stream down his face, twisted with grief and sorrow. I grit my teeth, wanting so goddamn badly to look away, but I can't. His unbidden cries settle into my mind as if they never left. The begging and pleading, the promising to do better and be better if only she’ll wake up, it’s all there, fresh as the day I uttered them. The day my mother died.
“Sorry about him, he’s always been an angry boy. That’s just his natural setting.” My father’s weathered voice brings me back to the present, and I clamp down on the growl building in my chest.
The nurse doesn’t seem to be relieved by his words, if anything she looks more terrified. Her wary gaze travels over my face, lowering to the tattoos covering my forearms and hands before snapping back up to meet my unimpressed scowl. Fear coats the air around us, shining brightly through her, but I don’t miss the hint of interest gleaming as well. That is the typical response I receive when encountering new people. So why did Bambi act like I’m nothing more than a teddy bear?
The nurse slowly bends down to pick up her clipboard, keeping her eyes trained on me, and I can’t quite decipher if she’s purposefully trying to look like prey, or if it’s unintentional. Either way, the normal satisfaction I feed on when strangers sense the predator lurking just below my surface is muted, and that just pisses me off more. It’s incomprehensible how much I’ve been altered by my interaction with the doe.
I control my thoughts. My actions. My words. Not the other way around. No one has control over me. A phrase I repeat on a loop, like a prayer on a poor man's dying breath.
“I’ll see myself out,” the nurse chirps, giving me a wide berth as she rushes out of the room.
The door slams shut behind her and my father balks, a hacking cough coming from him. “You really know how to make an entrance, eh mijo?”
“I learned from the best, jefe,” I grunt and stand by the foot of his bed, picking up his chart. “So you couldn’t let Manny help you and now you’re here with … a broken femur, twelve screws, and a plate in your leg?”
Shaking my head, I drop his chart back in the slot. Why am I not surprised? My father clucks his tongue and I pause. I do the same gesture. Shit, it’s been so long since I’ve heard him do that, I honestly forgot.
“Manny doesn’t know how to clean it like I do,” he grumbles like a child who’s been scolded.
“So teach him,” I bark, throwing my hands in the air.
“I can’t teach him anything, he thinks he knows everything.”
That does sound like Manny. I concede that point, but argue, “You’re getting too old to be doing the manual labor tasks. If Manny can’t be taught then you need to hire someone who can be.”
“I had someone who could do it all, but he turned his back on his legacy and moved to the Big Apple to chase his dreams.” My father stares out the window. His jaw jumps as he grinds his teeth with frustration—reminding me of myself, again.
“Los Angeles, not New York. You’d know that if you came to visit.”
“Like you come visit me? It took me breaking my leg for you to return home. Some son you are.” His words are full of barbs and heat, but no real venom. His features draw together, lines of sadness splaying across them. A solid punch strikes me in the gut. He’s not angry at me for being gone for so many years … he’s sad.
Coming around the bed, I drop into the chair near him, rubbing a hand through my hair and over my face. “You know why I had to leave, Pa.” I call him by the name I used to when I was a child, and his attention shifts to me.
“I needed to find my own path. I don’t live and breathe agave like you, and after Ma died, I just couldn’t do it anymore.”
We’ve already had this conversation—twenty years ago when I told him I was leaving for the States, and then again nearly every time we speak over the phone. I know the outcome now, surely as I knew it back then. He’ll never understand my motives. Never understand my bone-deep need to have roots in something other than red clay dirt. In something stable where the next meal isn’t accidentally forgotten. I promised Ma I would make something of myself and I have.
This is why I didn’t want to come back. This moment right here where I’m made into the villain. Don’t get me wrong. I am a villain, but not the one he’s making me out to be. He never had a choice to leave the fields, I did. I won’t apologize for that.
“I don’t want to fight. I’m here to help until you’re back on your feet, then I’m going back. I have a life in Los Angeles. A career that I thrive in.”
“And a woman? Have you settled down?”
He studies me carefully and I keep my face a mask of stone, even as vibrant green eyes, soft curves, and bouncy red curls fill my vision. “No, I haven’t settled down. I’m in the prime of my career.”
I leave it at that, not interested in discussing my private life any further. The events of today were a fluke. I can’t say they were a mistake, nothing about Bambi is a mistake, but a one time thing that will never happen again. Especially since I have no idea what her real name is or where she’s staying. I brush away the errant thought and focus on my father. Like me, his skin is a rich caramel color, but where mine is covered in tattoos, his is covered in thin white scars. Hazards of being a jimador. His scars tell a story, as do my own. His dark hair is a mess of short spiral curls on top of his head.
“I need you to do me a favor, mijo.”
My face pinches into a scowl. What more could he need, I’m here?
“Don’t give me that look. It’s the one you’ve had on your face since you were a bébé.”
“What do you need?” I ask flatly.
