He turns his palm over and squeezes my fingers once, tight, then let’s go and reaches for the door handle.
Hayden helps him, and dad doesn’t stop him, mostly because dad doesn’t have the strength to do anything himself yet.
Inside it's warm, that's the first thing I notice. Not the clinical cold I've been existing in for weeks, the hospital temperature that gets into your bones and stays there. This is actual warmth, the kind which comes from a building that's properly heated and properly looked after, with wooden floors and good lighting, and a reception desk staffed by a woman who looks up when we come in and smiles like she was expecting us. This place looks amazing.
"Mr. Banks," she says. "We've got everything ready for you."
Dad looks around the entrance hall. I watch him take it in, the tidiness of it, the quiet. A noticeboard with staff photos. A small table with a plant on it that is genuinely alive and recently watered. A corridor leading off to the left where I can hear low voices and the efficient movement of people who know what they're doing and are comfortable doing it.
He doesn't say anything, but his shoulders drop a fraction.
I’m liking this place more and more.
The nurse who shows us to his room is somewhere in her fifties, the kind of person who has clearly been doing this long enough that nothing flusters her and everything is handled before you've finished asking. She shows Dad the room, a proper bed, proper window, a chair by it that looks like it was chosen for actual comfort rather than to technically qualify as seating, and she explains the schedule the care plan and the meals, and she answers his questions directly without making him feel like they're inconvenient. So much better than the hospital.
Dad has a lot of questions, which I knew he would have.
She answers all of them.
I stand by the window while this happens and I look out at the garden at the back of the clinic, a small well maintained garden, a bench on a path that gets the afternoon sun, and I breathe properly for the first time in what feels like weeks.
He's going to be okay here. I never thought that the Crawford clinic would be anything but amazing.
I can feel it in the building, in the warmth of it, in the way the nurse says his name and means it. He's going to be okay.
I know that the clinic has different areas, for different things. And I can’t wait to learn more about it.
Hayden appears beside me. "Thank you," I say quietly, so only he hears.
He looks at me sideways. "You've said that a lot lately."
"I mean it a lot lately."
He looks back out at the garden, and I lean into him while dad talks to the nurse.
After the nurse has finished and Dad is sitting in the chair by the window looking marginally less like a man who’s been brought somewhere against his will, she slips out quietly, and I go to find the bathroom.
I take the longer route back wanting to see more of the clinic which I’m loving more as I walk through it.
This place is going to be amazing for dad.
When I come back down the corridor I stop just short of the doorway when I hear voices.
I look through the gap, Hayden’s standing by the window where I was, his hands in his pockets, looking out at the garden. Dad is still in the chair, but he's turned slightly toward him.
I don’t go in, but I know I shouldn't be listening either but can’t help myself.
Dad's voice is low. I can't catch all of it, just pieces, fragments of his words.
"...know what she did. Know what it cost you..." A pause. Hayden doesn't move. "...not asking you to forget it. I'd never ask that..." Another pause, longer. "...but she's all I have left now. You understand that."
It's not a question.
Hayden is quiet for a moment, then he turns from the window and looks at my dad.
"Mr. B I love your daughter, I've always loved her, even when I should hate her, I loved her. I’m putting the past in the past, I know she still hates herself for it, but I will never bring it up again. I can’t stop her thinking about it, I’ve tried, but you know her well enough to know she’s the way she is. But even after everything, I love her."
My dad looks at him for a long moment. That long, reading look he has, the one that has never once in my entire life failed to find what it was looking for.
