I shake my head, trying to ignore the flush creeping up my neck. “I’ll be okay… thank you.”
They exchange a look—one of those silent conversations they’re too good at—and before I can argue again, they’re half dressed, grabbing keys and shoes.
The ride is wordless. Miles drives. Jamie sits beside him, jaw working, eyes fixed on the road. I stare out the window, every muscle taut.
When we pull up in front ofSt. Augustine Memorial Hospital, I unbuckle fast. “Thanks,” I manage.
Jamie opens his mouth, maybe to argue, but I’m already out the door.
The fluorescent lights in St. Augustine hum like a held note. They make the white tile feel sharper, every edge more brittle. The antiseptic punches through the corridor air, sweet and chemical, and I taste it at the back of my throat as soon as I step in.
There’s a cheery poster about hand hygiene taped above the nurses’ station, a smiling cartoon heart, and the contrast between the fake cheer and what I know is under the hospital surfaces is enough to make bile rise.
I go straight to the desk because there isn’t time for anything else. My feet make a small, loud noise on the linoleum. Thenurse looks up from her paperwork, eyes scrolling politely over my face like she’s reading a name off a list.
“Ms. Ashford?” she asks. Her badge reads MARIE, RN, St. Augustine. She says it as if I’ve been expected—calculated, official. “Do you have ID?”
I fish for my wallet with hands that feel foreign. My fingers tremble as I hand it over. The nurse studies the card, types, makes a call. The phone on the desk clicks and I listen to the way the line takes forever to connect. In the background, someone laughs too loudly at a television no one’s really watching. People pass in masks, moving like ghosts.
“Name again?” she asks after the third pause on the line.
“Chloe Ashford.” My voice doesn’t sound like mine. It’s thin and papered. “I need to see my father.”
She reads the page and taps her pen in a small, worried rhythm. “Mr. Ashford is an inmate, Ms. Ashford. Visits are restricted. I’ll call security.” She picks up the phone and her voice becomes procedural on the line. It’s like watching someone flip a switch and become a soft, institutional thing. She tells me there’ll be a wait and to take a seat in the corridor. It’s not the cinematic, grease-and-flowers chaos I imagined, it’s bureaucracy, and it pulls at me differently—less immediate, more suffocating. I sit, clutching my phone so hard the edges dig into my palm.
Minutes stretch. I count them off by the flick of a clock hand and the beep of the monitor in a nearby room. Every sound in thehospital is amplified. A cart squeals somewhere down the hall. Pages are turned. Nurses call out room numbers like little, dry sorrows. If I close my eyes I can’t keep the memory from pushing through—the smell of the warehouse, of tar and cement and something copper on the air, the way my hands had trembled then too, the immediate, physical need to do any small thing to fix something that’s broken beyond repair.
The days spent in a hospital after.
I fight my need to retch.
Finally, a security guard in a crisp uniform appears, clipboard clutched to his chest. He’s younger than I’d expected, clean-shaven, a scar that runs small and pale along his jaw where I imagine a knife once grazed him in someone else’s life.
“You Ms. Ashford?” he asks.
“Yes.” My voice is threadbare. “I was told I could see him.”
He checks, then gives a curt nod. “We can do ten minutes. He’s in Room 423. No physical contact. You’ll be supervised.” He looks at me for a long second, like he’s measuring whether I’ll be a problem. I don’t know whether to be grateful or furious.
Mr. Cadwell calls while I’m still at the desk—his voice clipped and efficient through the tinny speaker of my phone. “Chloe, the warden is being difficult. They’ll allow a ten-minute visit but you’ll be monitored. No touching, no long discussions, and keep it fast.” He lists names and times like he’s reading outcoordinates. “I’ll handle the paperwork, but move now. Don’t argue.”
I promise things I don’t intend to keep just to end the call. I stand, legs a little shaky, and the guard leads me down the corridor. The hustle of the hospital—people in scrubs, the soft shuffle of shoes—seems to operate in another country. It’s sterile and efficient and indifferent, the opposite of how my life used to feel in the house with its varnished floors and the whisper of money in the walls.
Room 423 is a small cube of light. The door opens and my breath catches. He’s there—half-swollen face, the tanned skin of him mottled with purple and grey. The left eye is a bruised eclipse, ballooned shut. A neat white bandage circles his temple.
The bed looks too small for him, like the room itself tries to compress his presence into something manageable. His wrist is cuffed to the rail with a single cold link of metal and a short strap that makes the restraint look deliberate, humiliating in a way I refuse to let myself feel.
He sees me before I get to a tray’s length away.
“Chloe.”
His voice is hoarse and raw but edged with his old, familiar command. It cuts across the bright, antiseptic air and grips me like a hand around my throat. He’s so angry he looks younger—like he’s been carved down to the core of what hurts him.
I stop a breath away from the foot of the bed because the guard doesn’t move to let me come closer. He’s a sentinel, and I’m an intruder looking in.
“Get over here,” my father says. The word is hot and sharp. There’s no pity in it. There’s only expectation.
It takes me a second to move—part fear, part the memory that he will always demand and I will always obey. I walk the distance in short steps, the squeak of my shoes loud. Up close, the injuries are worse than the phone call suggested. The skin around his temple is puckered; a thin crust of dried blood peeks from the bandage edge. When he breathes the pain ages him by years. Even bruised he exudes the kind of authority that used to make the world bend.
