It won’t stop.
“Jerry?”
The coughing continues, and he tries to cover it like he’s stopping the demons from coming out.
The sound tears through the room—wet and scraping, sending me into a flight or fight response. His frail frame folds inward. I watch, frozen, fingers twitching at my sides, that instinctive dread crawling up my spine like I’m twelve again, waiting for the crash that always came after the storm.
“Jerry?” I say again, and my voice cracks in a way I didn’t intend, the way it did five years ago when I got the call that they didn’t make it. I can feel the rain on my skin when I ran outside, as if the universe would give me the answers. As if running, crying, screaming would’ve changed the outcome.
He tries to speak, a rasp of air, but the coughing swallows him whole. His shoulders shake violently, and when his hand falls away from his mouth, I see the smear of red.
Before I can move, the door bursts open.
A nurse from the center—the same calm-sounding woman who led me in—rushes to his side. What was her name?
Karen.
That’s right.
Her expression shifts fast from professional neutrality to almost panic. “We need to get him lying on his side. Now.”
Jerry tries to wave her off, but the motion barely lifts an inch before his arm drops again. His breath shudders. His eyes—those whiskey eyes I inherited—wander around the room in confusion until they find me.
And the bottom drops out of my chest.
I see him as a human being for the first time in my adult life.
He’s not scary; he’s…scared. This is not fake. This is not a product of being out of touch with reality. He looks scared, like he knows his body is failing him, and at any moment, he won’t come back from it.
“Holden…” he wheezes, reaching a shaking hand toward me.
The nurse lowers the back of the chair, adjusting him with careful, practiced gentleness. “Jerry, keep your head back for me. Breathe deep.” She glances at me quickly, her voice low. “This isn’t good. We might need to call an ambulance.”
The words hit harder than I expect. When I came here today, I swore I was ready to tell him goodbye and never see him again, but the way my heart is in my throat and my short nails are digging into my skin tell a different story,
Jerry jolts at them too, chest heaving, panic threading through every harsh breath. His fingers grasp at the air like he’s trying to hold on to something that keeps slipping away.
“No…no hospital,” he coughs, shaking his head.
His eyes stay glued to me, wild, terrified, pleading in a way I’ve never seen from him—not once in my entire life. I used to see it in the way Mom would look at him, pleading him to stop.
This storm raging inside me is more than I can handle, and the urge to scream at him thathe made his bed and he should lie in itis strong.
“Please,” he mouths.
I take one step toward him before I even realize I’m doing it. Because I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want to comfort him. I don’t want this to be happening. Not when I’m still angry. Not when I still don’t know what is real and what is manipulation. Not when I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him.
But the fear in his face makes everything inside me twist. I can't deny it.
Another coughing fit crashes over him, his body jerking forward. The nurse immediately presses a towel to his mouth, her jaw tight when more red blooms across the fabric.
She looks at me again. “I have to call them.”
I swallow and nod because there’s nothing else to do. Nothing I can fix. Nothing I can do.
The nurse steps toward the hall to call for help, leaving us in this small, stale room that suddenly feels too quiet, too full of all the years between us.
Jerry’s head lolls back against the chair. His breath rattles, but his gaze stays locked on mine—desperate, terrified, clinging.
