I settle deeper into the chair, pulling my coat tighter around my shoulders. The warmth from the flames doesn't quite reach me.
We wait.
Dmitri
The door stands open. I pause at the threshold.
Aleksander stands near the window, his back to me. His shoulders are rigid, hands shoved deep in his pockets. He doesn't turn when I enter.
Oleg sits in a chair against the wall, elbows on his knees, head bowed.
Dr. Petrov hovers near the bed, checking monitors, adjusting tubes. Nurse Katya stands beside him, her face professionally blank.
And in the center of it all, swallowed by white sheets and medical equipment, lies my father.
He looks small. That's the first thing I notice. My father has never looked small. He filled every room he entered, commanded every space he occupied. Even after the cancer diagnosis, even as the disease ate away at him from the inside, he maintained that presence.
Not anymore.
His skin has taken on a grayish pallor, stretched too tight over bones that seem to protrude more than they did this morning. His breathing comes in shallow rattles, each inhale a battle, each exhale a surrender.
But his eyes.
His eyes find mine the moment I step into the room.
Pale blue, almost colorless. The same eyes I see in the mirror every morning. The same eyes that watched me kill my first man at sixteen, that assessed my every decision, that never quite showed the pride I craved.
Those eyes lock onto me now with an intensity that steals my breath.
I cross the room.
Aleksander finally turns, his face haggard. He nods once, then looks away. Oleg doesn't move, doesn't lift his head.
I pull a chair to the bedside and sit.
Up close, the damage is worse. The hollows beneath his cheekbones have deepened. His lips are cracked, tinged with blue. The hand resting on the blanket looks like a skeleton's hand, veins standing out like rivers on a map.
He wasn't like this when I met him this morning. Or I was blind to see it.
But those eyes. Those fucking eyes won't let me go.
His mouth opens. A sound emerges—wet, strangled, barely human.
"Papa." The word scrapes out of me, rough and broken. "Don't?—"
"Mr. Baganov." Dr. Petrov steps forward, his voice gentle but firm. "Please. You shouldn't try to speak. Your body needs?—"
My father's gaze snaps to the doctor with such ferocity that Petrov actually steps back. Even now, even dying, Alexei Baganov can silence a room with a look.
His mouth opens again.
"Dmi—" A cough wracks his frame, wet and horrible. Nurse Katya moves to adjust his oxygen, but he waves her away with a trembling hand. "Dmitri."
My name. Mangled, barely recognizable, but my name.
"I'm here." I lean closer. "I'm here, Papa."
His hand moves on the blanket, fingers twitching. Reaching.
