Page 74 of Together We Rot

He’s sporting a partial neck brace and his left foot is elevated from the rest of him, clearly shattered.

He’s got a row of stitches running from his ear to his hairline. I take my seat at the edge of the bed and the nurse fusses with something on his chart.

He slips effortlessly into dad mode, an MO I’d long assumed was terminated. “I’m glad you’re okay. You could’ve been seriously hurt.”

“Are you really going to start lecturing me?” I deflect, and my flippant response clearly doesn’t sit well with him. I think of how easily he could have broken. Dead like Mom. My voice breaks as I snap, “None of that was your business. You shouldn’t have come.”

The nurse quietly dismisses herself in the background, retreating into the hall like it’s some sort of nuclear-fallout bunker. I don’t blame her. I’d hide too.

“Your well-being has always been my business.”

I’m about to ask him “Since when?” but I don’t get the chance to ask anything at all. He wraps me in a crushing half hug from his bed.

“D-Dad, lie back, you’re beat up. You need to take it easy.”

“I thought you were dead earlier,” he whispers into my ear, his voice curdled and thick. He chokes and the tears make a mess of his face. “Your mom’s old room was gone in the blink of an eye. I searched everywhere and couldn’t find you. I thought I’d lost you.”

His tears have some of my own prickling to the surface. I have to swat at my eyes to keep them from raining down my cheeks.

“Why couldn’t you care this much when I needed you?” I ask, and the words hurt. They impale us both, leaving me gutted and him speechless. Mom never had a funeral, so I buried her in “Missing” flyers. Dad buried himself away in his room. “I lost both of you at the same time.”

I spent days and weeks and months chasing answers, all in an attempt to run from grief. It was hot on my tail always, waiting for a quiet moment to pounce. I ran even when my legs heaved and my chest ached, but Dad gave up from the very start.

I juggled the bills in his stead, bouncing job to job while he lay comatose in his own bed. Not dead but determined to waste away anyway. I’d cried and screamed and begged, but the father I knew was lost to me, and no amount of “Missing” posters would bring him back, either.

“You weren’t there,” I repeat, and now the tears are streaming and there’s no chance of stopping them. “You weren’t there when I needed you to be. You left me alone. So don’t act like you care now.”

“I never stopped caring, I just—” He knots his fingers in his hair, and I watch as he scrambles to piece together the rest of his thoughts. “I cared too much. That was the problem. I cared so much that I couldn’t breathe or move or eat. Do you understand, Minnie? Your mother was the best part of me. The most important part. When she disappeared, everything ended. She left when you were young, said this life was too stifling for her. I was broken then, and when she left again? I assumed she was gone forever. And now I’ll never—” He bites back a sob, his knuckles grazing against his teeth. “I couldn’t look at you without seeing the life I made with her. Without thinking I was the one that should’ve disappeared. Let’s face it, your mother would have been so much better at this. With you. I didn’t feel like I was good enough.”

“Mom? The lady who cried at other people’s funerals?” I ask him, and it hits me after the words are out that she would be ten times worse at this. I’ve known it forever, but this is the first time hearing the truth out loud. The first time I’ve ever admitted it to myself. “No, Mom was too gentle for grief like that. It would have destroyed her.”

He struggles to pull himself together, but after so many times breaking down, it’s a hard thing to do.

Returning to “normal” is impossible. At least, the normal we had before all this.

“It destroyed me too,” he whispers, his voice so soft, it crushes something within me.

I bury my head in his chest. When I was a child, he was a giant. But after all these years, I’m the one who’s grown, and all he’s done is stay the same.

He startles, and I worry he might shut down again, but then his weathered hand finds its way to my hair. I can’t see him, but I feel his body shake with tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers into my scalp. “You don’t have to forgive me. I’m not asking you to. But please know that I’m sorry for leaving you on your own all this time. I was so caught up in my own grief that I ended up making yours twice as difficult. I’m so, so sorry, Minnie. Er, I’m sorry. I know you prefer Wil now.”

I bite hard on my cheek to fight the tears. I’ve had enough crying today to last a lifetime. “No,” I say into his shirt before pulling away. “Minnie is fine.”

“Your mother would be incredibly proud of you.” He eclipses my hands with his, making sure the words hit home. “Truly.”

Tears well in my eyes and trickle paths down my cheeks. “She’d be proud of you too, Dad.” That’s all I can get out. Everything else burns in my chest.

“Doctor said it’ll be a week before I can go home again. Sounds like I’ll be eating a lot of hospital food.” He nods toward the leftovers on his tray. It looks exactly like what the school dishes out. “When I get out... I... I’ve been thinking of cooking again.”

“Really?” I whisper, laying my head on his chest again, listening to the soft murmur of his heart. “Yeah, it’s about time to get back to it, don’t you think?” His smile lifts one corner of his mouth.

“Chocolate-stuffed pancakes?” I ask, hopeful.

“With extra whipped cream,” he promises. It’s difficult to smile, but I try my best.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

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