“He looks so thin.” The small voice comes from my right.
Alya. Her voice is low, but in the stillness of the room, it feels deafening. She stands closest to the bed, her small fingers gripping the fabric of her dress, eyes locked onto her grandfather’s frail form.
Filipp exhales sharply, his voice cutting through the silence like a dull blade. “He looks terrible.”
It’s not grief. Not concern. Just a performance. His arms are crossed, posture casual, but his gaze flickers—calculating, already looking past the man in the bed to the power that will shift when he’s gone.
“It’s expected,” Dr. Gurinov says.
I look at the doctor. He has the hollow-eyed sharpness of a man who’s seen too much of life slipping away under his hands. Thin, with silvering hair and a pair of wire-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he checks Anatoly’s vitals with the ease of a man who’s done this a thousand times. His suit is crisp, dark, out of place in a setting that stinks of sickness and death.
He flips through notes on his tablet. “Six months in a coma. His body is failing—organs shutting down, muscles wasted away. It’s happening faster than we anticipated. That’s why you’re here today, Mr. Belov. I suspect he has hours left. Maybe less.”
My children are quiet. Nikolai, next to his little sister, keeps his head up, shoulders squared, mimicking the posture I taught him. Lev shifts beside them, his hands curled into loose fists at his sides, his usual restless energy subdued.
They are watching. Learning.
I exhale slowly. “You’re sure?”
Gurinov doesn’t falter. “There’s nothing more we can do. His body is failing rapidly. At this point, it’s only a matter of time.”
Alya swallows hard, her grip tightening. I place a hand on her shoulder, grounding her. She doesn’t look at me; just keeps her eyes on the dying man in the bed.
There is a finality to this moment. A chapter closing. A legacy passing into the ground.
Gurinov adjusts my father’s IV drip, then glances at me. “Would you like a moment alone with him?”
I glance at the monitors, the slow, even line of his heartbeat. “No.”
I don’t need to say goodbye.
This man never taught me how to grieve him.
The doctor nods and steps back. My children say nothing. The room holds its breath.
And then—
A flicker.
A tremor.
A single movement.
One of my father’s fingers twitches. Just the smallest, almost imperceptible motion, but I see it.
I freeze. The doctor does, too. A second passes. Then another.
It happens again. The faintest jerk of his pinky, like a whisper against the sheets.
Alya gasps.
Gurinov’s brows knit together. “That’s…” He moves forward quickly, checking Anatoly’s pulse, his pupils. “That’s not possible.”
The machines beep steadily. No alarms. No sudden spikes. But I see it. Another movement. A twitch. A slow, deliberate breath.
I step closer, my pulse steady, my mind already calculating. “Doctor. Explain.”
Gurinov’s fingers shake slightly as he adjusts the oxygen mask. “I… I don’t know. This doesn’t make sense. The scans, the vitals—he shouldn’t be moving. He shouldn’t be…”
