Word Count: 1674

He remembered to bring a coat this time.

The chair was still misleading to the eye, cushioned but terribly uncomfortable, though he hadn’t expected anything better. Everything else was the same, too. The same egg-shell colored walls—bare but for a single poster—the same overly clean floors, the same stark whiteness, the same unbearable cold. There was a small TV perched high in one of the corners, but the screen was blank. A nurse had offered to turn it on earlier; neither of them had seen much of a point in it. It remained off, with the result that the room was too quiet, too silent.

Paris sat in the chair, his feet propped up on the edge, his knees brought up to his chest. He wrapped his arms around them, as if something so simple was enough to ward off the cold and the helplessness. It didn’t work, of course. He didn’t think anything ever would.

Henri LeFay laid on the bed, which wasn’t so much a bed as a narrow mattress with bars on each side—nothing that provided any sort of real comfort. It looked a bit like a prison cell in the form of something that should have offered relief and relaxation. It was tilted up on one end, with a pillow to support his father’s head and shoulders, his body covered in a hospital gown and a thin looking blanket in an unattractive green color. An IV had been stuck in and taped to his left hand.

Paris could see a bit of blood in it. The nurse had drawn some a short while ago, before attaching the IV tubing. Some still lingered behind, and he did his best not to look at it.

He’d never had the stomach for blood. It was doubly hard when it was the blood of someone he cared for.

He looked at everything else instead—the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the bars, the door, and finally his father, who looked so tired and so old Paris wondered how he still had the energy to go on, and that scared him.

Paris hated seeing his father that way. He shouldn’t look like that—not for many, many years.

He hated the silence, too. It wasn’t comfortable, but heavy, oppressive. He’d never liked it—couldn’t stand it. Silence meant he had nothing left to do but think, and thinking often led him down paths he didn’t wish to tread. Talking was better, even if it was awkward.

Even if it was painful.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He tightened his arms around his legs and propped his chin on his knees.

His father turned his head slightly, just enough to look at him. “About?”

Paris frowned sadly and looked away. “For being a disappointment.”

A snort turned into a cough. Henri moved his head back around, staring at the door through which a nurse would soon come for him. “No one said you were a disappointment.”

“You were never happy with me,” Paris pointed out.

“I was never happy with anything.”

It was a sad truth. Paris had nothing to say to argue that, and it only made him feel worse. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen his father smile. Now he had to wonder, in all these eighteen years, if he ever had.

The thought brought tears to his eyes, made him feel like a failure. He blinked rapidly to force them away.

“I’m the disappointment,” Henri said. There wasn’t any sadness or bitterness in his voice any longer, or even any regret. It was cold and empty—dead, even if he wasn’t.

Paris turned his head back. He would have been surprised by his father’s comment if he could feel anything over his distress. “I never thought you were.”

Henri laughed humorlessly. “You’d be the only one.”

“I never made things easier for you,” Paris observed. “I probably only made things worse.”

Bright eyes, very much like his own, narrowed in his direction. “Your momma might’ve left, but I never did,” his father ground out. “I was never going to. If I hadn’t wanted you there, I’d have kicked you out when you started being a pain in the a**, but I never did that either, did I?”

Paris felt the burning in his eyes grow stronger. He shook his head and choked out an answer. “No.”

“Then don’t pretend like you know anything.”

He nodded to show he understood, and then buried his face into his knees—it wasn’t any safer there, but at least he didn’t have to see anything.

He didn’t know that he could do this. It had been difficult before, when his father had first gotten sick. It was harder now. He’d known it would be. He could never fool himself into believing that any of this would be easy, but he’d thought he was managing it. He’d thought he was getting by. He’d thought they both were.

But now, sitting here, waiting for the nurse to come in and wheel his father away, and knowing there would only be more waiting to come—anxious, painful waiting—Paris would rather go back seven months and relive the start of all this than spend any more time trying to deal with the present.

“Are you afraid?” he asked in a thick, tremulous voice. He hadn’t meant to say it, but once it was out there, hanging between them, he glanced up to see his father’s reaction.

Henri hadn’t looked away when Paris had, and stared at him through narrowed eyes set in a face that was too pale. He frowned, perhaps in thought, and for a moment he said nothing. Then he shook his head and simply said, “No.”

Paris nodded again. He should have expected the answer. He’d never known his father to be afraid of anything.

He assumed the silence would return. For a moment it did, but then his father asked, “Are you?”

There were many answers. There was the easy answer and the lie, and then there were words that were more specific, more true. Paris didn’t know which one to choose, which one his father wanted. Eventually, he settled for the truth.

“Terrified.”

He had always been afraid of death, in all of its many faces.

He watched his father’s face, tried to gauge his reaction, but Henri’s expression never changed. He was pale and cold and passive, and he sighed and nodded and settled back against the bed, shifting his eyes back to the door.

Paris had to turn away again. He didn’t know what he’d expected. Comfort? He wouldn’t get that. Sympathy? Not that either. Empathy? No. Henri didn’t feel the way he did. He supposed his father felt he didn’t have anything to be afraid of. He’d spent years wasting away. What more did he have in life to fear losing?

‘Me,’ Paris thought. ‘He has me.’

But he’d never been enough.

The door opened. A nurse came in with a smile that seemed well-practiced. She spoke, but Paris barely heard anything she said. Reassurances, probably, and procedures, and other things that were cold and clinical and distantly supportive, but nothing that helped. She gave his father something to make him relax, and then she was joined by two others nurses who prepared to roll the bed away with Henri LeFay in it.

Paris stood from the chair and tried to seem stable and confident. He looked at his father and watched his features ease somewhat from the drug. Henri grew drowsy, the lines on his face seemed less pronounced, his frown not as deep. Paris tried to smile but couldn’t. There wasn’t anything to smile about. His father could face what was to come without fear, and the nurses could say what they wanted to offer comfort, but Paris knew it wasn’t so simple.

Not today. Not this time.

He followed them out and went with them down the hallway as far as he could. They approached a set of double doors, each set with a single small window. Paris looked at the pair of them and swallowed, and then turned to his father to wish him luck, all the while thinking to himself that it was almost like saying “goodbye.”

Henri’s eyes were unfocused, but locked on Paris with something in them that looked as if it could be sadness. Paris tried to smile again, to show that he’d be okay, to lie and keep his father at ease, though he knew Henri could see right through him even if the nurses couldn’t.

A hand reached out, swift and determined while the rest of Henri’s body remained relaxed on the mattress. It grabbed Paris’s hands and squeezed tightly.

“Je t’aimes, Paris.”

The gurney stopped right before the set of windowed doors.

Paris blinked rapidly through the burning in his eyes, and took a shaking breath that did nothing to help.

He couldn’t remember his father ever saying anything like that—not to him, not even to his mother—and though it would have been easy to convince himself that it was only the drugs talking, Paris didn’t think they could put thoughts in his father’s head that hadn’t already been there. He forced back his tears, squeezed back with his hand, but could only feel small, and lost, and alone, knowing that he would likely never hear those words again, no matter what the outcome of this day would be.

The hand slipped away, falling back to the narrow mattress. The doors were pushed open, and Paris could follow no longer.

He struggled to say something—anything, everything. His throat felt sore and tight, his eyes too hot, his face too wet.

“Ne me quitte pas!” he cried.

Henri’s eyes met his once more. The nurses pushed the bed through the doors. Paris stood and watched, and felt too young and too helpless and too unprepared.

Not for life.

Not for death.

The doors swung shut with his father on the other side.

Paris stood alone.