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Atlas
Idroveupto Heritage Ministries Nursing Home and pulled into a parking spot. I stared at the gray building with peeling paint and a lawn overrun by weeds. This obviously wasn’t the best facility money could buy.
I cut the engine of my patrol car. Technically, I wasn’t supposed to take my vehicle on road trips, but I was already here. My chest tightened as I came to the door with rusted hinges. It squeaked when I opened it, making me wince.
A receptionist sat at a desk in the small lobby. She looked up at me as I approached, her lips breaking into a sweet smile. She looked young, younger than me and probably Ty, too. Her eyes scanned me up and down.
“Hi,” she said, her voice high and too chipper for a place like this. “How may I help you?”
I cleared my throat, running a hand through my hair as a spike of anxiety shot through me. “I, uh, I’m looking for Johnathan Williams?”
Her eyes widened, smile falling. “John?” she said, confused.
I nodded. “Uh, yes. John Williams? Is he…is this where he is?”
Her confusion didn’t dissipate, and I thought maybe I was in the wrong place. But then she shook her head slightly as if to clear it. “Oh, yes, I’m sorry. It’s just that John doesn’t get visitors. I think you’re probably the first one ever.”
She gave me a sad sort of look.
“I see,” was all I said in return.
After an awkward pause, the receptionist blushed. “Anyways, he’s in room 334. It’s down that hall there. Make a right when you get to the end, and it’ll be the third door on your left.”
I nodded once and turned in the direction she pointed.
I walked down the hall, my muscles taut and stiff as if they were ready to snap. The smell of mushy food mixed with the scent of burnt coffee made me want to gag. Some of the rooms I passed were open, but I didn’t look inside. Places like these made my skin crawl. Not because of the people who stayed here, but because it was the last stop. The last place any of these people would ever know before they moved on from this world.
The hall went on forever, as if I were stuck in slow motion. With every step, I resisted the urge to turn back around and run—run straight out of this suffocating, dreary place and never look back. But eventually, I arrived. I stared at the number on a small plaque to the right of a slightly open door: 334. If the woman at the desk had given me the correct information, my father was on the other side of this door.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there staring, but a chorus of deep, wet, hacking coughs startled me. A thrum of anxiety ricocheted through my chest. I thought about turning around and leaving again. No one would ever know I was here.
And yet, I had come all this way. I wasn’t going to find the reason why if I left because of fear.
Everything happened for a reason. There was always a purpose.
Wren’s voice echoed in my mind. Purpose.
I took a breath, unclenching my shaky hands, and I pushed the door all the way open. The room smelled musty, with a faint air of body odor. I wrinkled my nose and stepped inside. The TV was on in the corner of the room, playing some black-and-white show I didn’t know the name of. A bed was against the far wall, and in that bed was my father.
At least, I was fairly sure it was my father. He looked worse than he had in the ID photo. His skin was thin and wrinkled, clinging to the frail bones of his face like wet paper. He had oxygen in his nose and other tubes and wires connecting him up to various machines surrounding the bed.
He was sick. I’m not sure why that fact surprised me. He was in a nursing home. He wasn’t even sixty yet. Seeing his thin, frail body propped up in that bed and the pale, almost green hue of his skin had mine crawling.
His dark hooded eyes shifted toward me, pinning me to the spot. The man who I’d once been so terrified of. The man who I’d once wanted to love me, but never, ever had. That man looked at me, his graying, bushy brows pulled together for a moment as he took me in, perhaps realizing that I wasn’t one of the workers who came to tend to him.
It seemed I stood there for a very long time, when suddenly, I saw it click in his brain. His eyes widened, pupils dilating as his mouth dropped open.
“Well,” he rasped, the sound sending him into another coughing fit. “I’ll be damned.” His voice sounded frail, as though it hadn’t been used often.
My jaw clenched. “You’re sick.”
The man in the bed chuckled, as well as someone who was in his shape could. “In more ways than one, I’d reckon.”
I pressed my lips against the vomit creeping up my throat. He smiled, showing off what was left of his crooked and rotting teeth.
“I shouldn’t have come,” I muttered, looking away, desperate to see anything else but that twisted, decaying grin.
He choked on his own laughter, almost hacking up a lung. “You came to see your old man after all this time, huh? I guess it makes ya glad to see this, don’t it? See me wasting away.”
