“What? What happened?”
“His lungs.”
“Did he tell you something and keep it from me?! Has he been to a doctor? We can get more than one opinion. He’s really notthatold!”
“He doesn’t know, I don’t think. It’s something I’ve been keeping an eye on. I listen to his breathing, his laugh, his cough. It’s gotten worse. I’m not sure he has too much longer before the lining of his lungs thins and gives out.”
“Gives out?” My eyes widen.
“He’s seventy-eight years old.”
I wave a hand dismissively. “People can live past one hundred.”
“Not all people were drowned by Meridei for several years. And he was in the asylum for twenty years. Who knows what else he saw in there.”
“But…things have been good. They’ve been good! It took us so long to stop hurting after Niles. We can’t—no!” I remember the first treatment I saw. Chekiss was barely hanging on in the hands of Meridei. Why didn’t I notice he was getting worse?!
“Neither of us wanted to see it, Skylenna.”
I ball my hands into fists, but Dessin pulls me against his bare chest to quell the firestorm of guilt, grief, terror, and hopelessness that is threatening to take me down.
“How do we—what do we tell the kids?” I ask numbly.
“Chekiss can decide that. We’ll talk to him about it tomorrow.”
I shake my head. My stomach folding over and crouching down with nausea.
“I—can’t. Please, just talk to him first.”
Chekiss is the only father figure I’ve ever truly had. I love him unconditionally. Unfortunately, I am not strong enough to have that conversation with him. But I know my husband is.
“Okay, baby. I’ll take care of it.”
79. Angels Suffer Long
Skylenna
1 year later
No one prepares you forthe moment you start memorizing someone’s face.
People come and go. Members of his gardening club. His book club. His humane society he started a decade ago. My children have stayed by his side most of the day. DaiSzek refuses to leave the foot of his bed, keeping his legs warm. Now it’s Ruth and Warrose, holding his hands and telling ridiculous stories from their home to make him smile.
You’d think watching someone die would be loud.
It isn’t.
It whispers.
It weeps quietly in the dead of night.
Because Chekiss can no longer speak. He nods. He coughs. And coughs more. And wheezes. And gags from coughing so hard he can’t catch his breath.
The fluid in his lungs rattles, webbing across his lungs and denying fresh oxygen. When hacking fits get too violent at night, he makes me leave the room, so I don’t have to see him suffer. But I hear it from behind his door. I slide down the wall and pray. I pray until my mind goes fuzzy and dazed. I pray that God will spare him the pain. That there are a great many people in this world who deserve to die a long, agonizing death—and Chekiss is not one of them.
I haven’t slept in four days.
Neither has my husband.
