Page 150 of Hard to Judge

Only two days have passed, but it feels like a hundred.

Emi rises from her seat in the corner. She is a petite woman with delicate features and a steel straight spine. “Great.” She bows only to me. “I will escort you to your father’s bedchamber.”

“You will escort all of us or none,” I challenge.

“Your father does not wish to be seen in such a state by strangers,” she pushes back.

“They aren’t strangers. They are my family,” I snap.

Her gaze darts back and forth between Hailey and Arlo, and then me, measuring my resolve.

My jaw tightens and lifts.

“He won’t like it.” Her head shakes. Miraculously, I hold my tongue. “This way.” She turns and heads down the corridor toward the stairs.

As if I don’t know where my father’s bedroom is.

Turns out, I don’t.

She bypasses the curved staircase and stops in front of the smallest bedroom in the place. One that was reserved for guests. One that my father thought too small for adults.

“He is hooked up to several machines,” she warns. “A nurse cares for him morning and evening.”

A lump forms in my throat. I nod.

Emi knocks, waits a moment, then opens the door.

Somehow the room seems larger than I remember. Or maybe it’s the horror of staring across the distance at a man I’ve only known as fierce and wholly capable to find his skin sallow, his cheeks sunken, and his body frail. The span seems impossible to navigate with my shoes suddenly turned to cinderblocks.

“Watashi no musuko,” he calls to me.

My son.

I haven’t been his son for twenty years. Possibly not a day in my whole fucking life. Yet…Those two words pull me in.

His arms rise slowly, beckoning me.

Slowly, I close the space between us. My gaze marks a large machine near the bed. It whips and whirs, creating the only sound in the room. Two red lines from the catheter protrude from my father’s arm. They are taped to him in several places and connect in two separate places to the unusual gadget.

I’m only a step away when realization nearly takes me off my feet. The lines are not red. The red is his blood being pumped through them and the machine.

My stomach flips.

“Anata ga koko ni ite kurete ureshidesu.” His thin fingers urge me closer.

I’m glad you’re here.

Beyond the dark circles under his eyes and the odd tint to his skin, I see the man I knew once upon a time.

My heart drops into my stomach. My skin goes tight, and I swear I might freeze from the sudden drop in my core body temperature.

When his arms wrap around me, I don’t feel familiarity or comfort.

He never hugged me as a child.

He never comforted me.

Before I can become truly secure in his arms, he releases me. Relief and disappointment war in my hollow chest.

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