Page 21 of Prince of Wrath

“Don’t,” he whispered. I looked over my shoulder. Johann’s grin widened.

“What? Rich boy’s got manners?” The others laughed. Some didn’t. But most of them had that unforgettable, sick, hungry hope people get when they want someone else to suffer loudly enough to distract from their own pain.

“I’m not hitting him,” I said. He shoved me so hard I hit the lockers shoulder-first. Metal screamed behind me. Pain burst down my arm, hot and immediate, and before I could breathe through it, he was in my face.

“You think you’re better than us, pretty face?”

Was I?

Not really.

I had arrived at Westbridge with expensive shoes, a family name, and the stupid belief that not wanting to be violent meant I wasn’t violent. I thought there was a difference between me and boys like Johann because I read books, said please to adults, and knew which fork to use at dinner parties. But in the background, my life was as ugly as theirs. I remember after the last party my parents hosted for my mom’s birthday. My father asked me to find him in his office late at night and teach me how to act like a man. Do better. Be sharper. Not fucking talk to the help. And so on. All of it taught by the end of his fist. He broke my nose twice in two years and told my mom it was rugby. I didn’t want to break the perfect picture she had of him. She was happy. I wasn’t. It didn’t matter. But in times like these, I would remember rage sitting in my stomach like a dog that had been starved for years.

“I said I’m not hitting him,” I told Johann. My head snapped sideways, the taste of copper invading my mouth. The world tilted bright and white for one second, and in that white place I saw my father’s face. You’ll thank me one day, Tristan. Men today are too soft. You need to harden yourself. As if manhood was something beaten into you by strangers while adults bet on you and called it discipline. I never wanted to be violent. But he was about to crack my neck if I didn’t act. Calm coated me all over, and I shoved my fist right into his nose, hearing the bone snap, his scream following as silence surrounded us; long gone were the chants of his name. I glanced at the kid who still stood by the lockers, frozen.

“Go,” I commanded calmly. And he did, with tears in his eyes, holding his arms like they could fall if he didn’t. A guard came, slammed me against the wall, and grabbed me by the green collar of our uniform. I didn’t fight it. I knew what would happen. Solitary. For at least two days. Justice was a foreign word here, and with no ability to contact my parents, I had no strings to pull, as if I had any in the first place. I still had eight months to go here. And my biggest fear wasn’t getting beaten up. It was becoming the one salivating at the thought of it.

Not my father, I repeated to myself in those four walls I had become so accustomed to. Never like my father.

Ella

I never thought that one day, I would stand in the hallway of a private care facility, staring at the door behind which my father now slept, and wonder if I had already lost the only home I had left. Not the house. The house had never truly been mine, had it? Neither the walls I knew like the back of my hand, nor the kitchen I had cleaned until my fingers ached. All of it belonged to Mara the second she decided I was useful only as something to take from. But Dad… Dad had been home. And now he was here, in a room two streets from Tristan’s house, surrounded by machines and nurses and the sterile scent of safety I was still learning to trust. Mara and my sisters had tried to end me, and now it was my duty to protect my father from their hands too.

Matt, a tall blond man with scars on his face and the build of a soldier, had driven us here, then followed us through the facility entrance. Tristan walked by my side, his left hand roaming under his suit jacket once in a while, as if I had not noticed his holster. It changed the way he moved. With it, he looked wider, his step heavier. I had seen the gun, and it did not scare me. On the contrary.

“Stand by,” Tristan muttered to Matt, who exchanged a nod with him before stopping near the hallway entrance, facing outward, guarding us. All I managed was a small thank you that would surely never be enough. This stranger was guarding us with his life, and I could not be more grateful. Waving from the tip of my chin toward him, I signed, thank you, hoping he would understand. Mat gave me a short nod.

I had expected something resembling a hospital, but the place looked more like a home than a medical facility, with plants, sage and pumpkin-colored walls, polished wooden floors, and large prints of European capitals lining the hallways. Framed watercolor landscapes hung here, photographs of vegetables and birds there, and the faint scent of lavender mixed with disinfectant floated through the air. Flowers sat on a reception desk, a glass water dispenser filled with slices of lemon and cucumber, and wide windows let in pale morning light. Even the air smelled expensive, and I was glad for it. Dad deserved the best, and Tristan had delivered.

A woman's voice came from behind the door, cheerful and unlike Mara’s. Right. The personal nurse Tristan had hired in addition to the already existing staff here. Gretchen. Tristan had told me her name in the car, slowly, watching my hands in case I needed him to repeat it. She was the one who had taken care of Dad during my absence.

“Do you want me to come in with you?” Tristan asks, voice low. I shake my head. Then stop. I do not know. I do not know what I want. I’m underwater, and someone underwater cannot talk, cannot ask or answer a question, cannot decide. All they can do is struggle and try not to drown. As if reading my distress, Tristan swallows, clenches his hand, and stands near Dad’s bedroom door like a bodyguard, waiting on me while giving me space. Approaching the door, I stop ever so slightly, and I cannot be sure if it just happens, if it is me or him but as I pass the door, the backs of our hands brush against one another. The air shifts in the almost imperceptible touch of his skin, lighting candles back in my cavern of misery, opening doors and windows and letting a ray of sunshine collapse on its walls. I do not flinch. And that’s something.

Pushing the door open, I step inside. Dad is there. Alive. Sleeping. His bed is wider than the one he had at home, with clean white sheets, a navy blanket folded at his waist, and several machines placed neatly on one side. A small sitting area, a dresser, a wall-mounted television, and a window overlooking a courtyard with tall grass moving in the wind. On his dresser sits the framed photo of me from his bedroom. A small Black woman stands by Dad’s bed, holding a remote near him.

“Right, just a tiny bit more and…” Noticing me, she holds one finger in the air.

“Almost done, almost done. And…right. All good.” She places the remote neatly on the side table, looks at Dad, then circles the bottom of the bed to come to me. Frozen, two feet inside the door, I stare at my father while Tristan watches me from the corner of my eye. I had pictured Dad dead so many times in twelve days that I am not sure if he can actually be alive now. My bones seem to carry the weight of every version of grief I rehearsed in the dark.

“Nice to meet you, Ella. I’m Gretchen,” the nurse says, with the smile of a woman who has seen it all and somehow still kept a heart big enough to hold other people’s worries. “Mr. Ashford hired me to take care of your dad and supervise his transfer here. I’m sure you have many questions. Would you like a glass of water?” From the side table, she takes a notebook and a pen and hands them to me. I take them with both hands, but I do not move. Stunned. Watching my father.

“He’s asleep,” she assures me, realizing shock has taken over me. “He’s okay. Please sit, Ms Ella. I’ll catch you up.” She pushes a chair toward the right side of the bed, and I sit, but I am not here. I am floating above myself, watching from the ceiling, only there is no ceiling and no sound but the constant beeping and the strange heart line forming drawings on a navy screen. “I’m specialized in home care, and I’m also a retired army nurse,” Gretchen says gently. “I’ve seen a lot. Your father had been receiving injections that were severely affecting his blood cells. From the blood work we got after his transfer, his body was struggling under the assault.” My pen remains still above the notebook. Injections. Blood cells. Assault. The words line up in my head too polite for what they mean. Poison. Mara had been poisoning him.

Or paying someone to do it, perhaps. The edges of the room blur.

“The good news,” Gretchen continues, her tone carefully joyful, “is that he’s stable now. You got a fighter there,” she adds. “He is safe here, and his doctor is following his case closely. Mr. Ashford acted quickly. He had him transferred here under private medical supervision, we’ve adjusted his medication and started treatment to support his recovery.” My hand moves before my brain catches up. I write, Will he wake up? Gretchen reads it, her expression softening.

“Yes,” she says. “He has been awake, not all the time, and not always fully aware of his surroundings, but yes. He wakes up. Between naps.” She pauses, looking at my dad with a soft smile. A thin silver Christian cross rests between her collarbones, and I notice colorful threaded bracelets on her wrist. She must be a mom. There is something about her that would make me trust her with my life, and with a newborn’s too. My fingers tremble around the pen. Did he ask about me?

The door opens slightly. Tristan appears behind me, and the air shifts from suffocating to breathable. One knee on the ground, he is next to me, so tall that even kneeling, his eyes almost meet mine.

“Ella, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I heard and thought you might need me, but I can wait by the door if…” Tears fill my eyes, and I nod, a silent thank you shaping my lips. Tristan looks at Gretchen, then at the notebook. I sign, can you ask if he asked for me? I don’t have it in me to write it.

“Ella would like to know if her father asked for her.” With a sad sigh, Gretchen answers, “He wasn’t always aware of his surroundings, but each time he was awake enough, yes. He did.” The pen almost falls from my hand.

Was he afraid? Tristan reads it and translates.

“No, confused but not afraid,” Gretchen assures. “I reassured him you were safe and coming back as soon as possible. He thought you were studying or at the library sometimes. Other times, he knew something had happened, but he was calm. Tired, mostly.” Sitting near Dad, I raise my hand and, in a miracle I did not expect from myself, manage to rest it on his. Sensing his blood underneath, still going, still alive. For the next hour, I sit there, torturing myself around all the unsaid things I wish I could have told my father, while the melody of his heartbeat draws lines on the monitor. Tristan leaves at some point, giving me privacy without needing to be asked. Gretchen adjusts something near the machine, then steps out too.