“Talk to me. Tell me the truth.”
A tear falls from his eye, and I can feel my heart break. I put my hand on his shoulder and squeeze gently. He looks up at me. “I’ve been trying to protect you.” He shakes his head. “I’ve been trying to protect myself. I never wanted you to hate me.”
“What did you do, Dad? Why won’t you tell me about the past?”
He takes a deep breath. “This is going to be hard for you to hear, so please don’t interrupt.”
“Okay.”
“It was my fault. Everything was my fault.”
The sobs that rip through my mouth can’t be controlled. Anger follows next. “You killed my family!” I shout, my anger palpable.
“Skye—” His Adam’s apple bobs, but I don’t let him deter me.
“No! You killed my family.” I close my eyes. Trying desperately to calm down. To swallow down the despair lodging in my throat. The grief I feel is raw and primitive. It feels like I’m being abandoned all over again. “Why”—I swipe away a stray tear that is drifting down my cheek—“did you adopt me?”
“Look at me, Skye.” Opening my lids, my gaze meets his. Then I’m moving to stand in front of him. “You were innocent. You had no—”
“I had no one because of you.” Another wave of tears pours down my cheeks. Then another thought hits me. “You only adopted me because you thought you owed me something, didn’t you?”
“It wasn’t—”
“Yes or no! Were you planning to adopt before me?”
“No, but—” His voice cracks. “Please—”
“There are no buts!” I cut him off.
His face is pale, his cheeks ashen. “Please let me explain. Please, it’s not what you think,” he begs.
“Did you or did you not have something to do with their deaths?” I’m pacing now, my anger needing an outlet.
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple to me.” My feet are probably making marks from the way they stomp down in anger. My whole body is shaking.
“Skye, plea—” His words cut off, followed by a thump. The sound has my heart stopping.
It feels like I can’t breathe as I turn to see my father slumped over the coffee table. I’m moving across the room and checking his pulse a moment later.
“Skye—”
“Shh, it’s okay.” He’s alive, but something is wrong.
“I-It w-wasn’t me,” he stutters out before his eyes flutter shut. His pulse is still there. Beating faintly but still there. Grabbing my phone from my pocket, I call 911, then Tobias. It’s only a second later when Tobias is in the room, then a few minutes pass before the EMS team wheels him away. I try to ride with him, but I can’t.
I pray he’s okay.
He can’t die.
He can’t leave me.
Hospitals are the worst. The sterile scent of bleach and the overwhelming sense of death and sickness are always present. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a hospital—twenty years, to be exact. Not since the day I woke from surgery and learned my whole life had changed.
When I still lived in town, my father was never sick, so I never needed to come back here. But now, walking with Tobias, no time has passed. My feet halt as I walk toward the reception, the ghosts of my past still here and present.
I stand breathless for a moment. I never expected to feel this way. My soul is crushing under the weight of my past. Tobias is here to help me. But even the feel of his skin on mine as he holds me isn’t enough to push me on.
I’m so angry. So fucking angry.
This might have been the last time with my father, and I spent it yelling at him.
I could lose him.
“He can’t die.”
Tobias doesn’t say anything. What can he say? We both know it’s inevitable.
My fists ball at my side, and Tobias stops walking and grabs my arm, pulling me with him in the direction opposite the reception desk.
“What are you doing?” I whisper shout.
Then he’s opening the first door he sees, a closet.
“Are you fucking kidding? My dad is dying, and you—”
“Stop. You need to calm down.” He places his hand on my shoulder. “You’re going to see your dad, and you need to be calm.”
“I am calm.”
His head shakes. “No, Skye. You’re not.”
“I’m not.” My body shakes with an unsuppressed sob. “I’m so confused.”
Tobias reaches his arm up, his fingers lifting my chin to meet his stare. “Talking to me.”
“I’m so angry. But how can I be angry? But I am. I’m furious. Furious at myself for being in the dark. Furious at my dad for lying. Furious at the world for making him sick. And mostly, I’m furious that I’m helpless. He is sick, and none of the other things matter, but it still hurts.” The sob pours out of my mouth, body shaking, tears falling.
Tobias wraps me in his arms and holds me. I cry and sob and curse the world, and then a calm falls over me. “Thank you for being here with me, despite everything.”
“Where you go, I go. Remember what you said . . .”
“You’re the plane.”
“And you are my sky,” he finishes for me.
“That’s not exactly what I said.” I smile softly at him. “I’m ready.”
Together, hand in hand, we leave the closet and make our way to the reception desk.
The woman who sits behind it is middle-aged and looks up as if she’s annoyed that I’m asking her questions.
“I’m looking for Ralph Matthews.”
“I’m sorry, we can’t give out information about patients.”
“But I’m his daughter.” My tone is more abrasive than I mean it to be, but my emotions are all over the place today.
“I’m sorry, but we still can’t give out information.”
I stare at the woman at the desk, pleading until she finally relents.
“He’s in triage. Room 202.” Before she can say anything else, I’m running down the hallway, Tobias trailing me.
I still don’t understand how I ended up here. How I ended up where it all began. The memory, like the familiar smell, tickles my nostrils, begging me to remember. It feels like only yesterday when I was waking up in the hospital bed. When Ralph Matthews was placing his hand over mine, his head downcast, as he told me about my parents. Now I’m back, and the most painful thought of all is that this all happened because of me.
I walk into my father’s room and stand next to his bed. I put a hand on his arm, and he moves a little. “Dad?” I ask quietly. “I’m here, Dad.”
“Skye?” he asks, barely audible.
“Yeah, Dad, it’s me.”
“You’re here?” There is confusion in his voice. “After everything that happened?”
“I am.”
“Skye?”
“No. Don’t. Not now. I’m sorry I did this to you, Dad, but I want to say I love you, and I know you’ve always been there for me. I never took the time to appreciate it. I love you, Dad, and I’m sorry for everything.”