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Not from me.
I stand perfectly still, the moment pressing down on my chest, my breath shallow and tight. A grim, final knowing settles low in me, quiet and certain.
Because mercy?
Mercy was never part of this.
I blink, my body frozen, my ears ringing with a high-pitched whine that drowns out everything else, the snorting of the pig, the wet ripping of skin and muscle, the gurgled sobs spilling from Dennis’s mouth.
I should move. I should stop this. But my limbs feel like lead, every nerve dulled by the thick fog settling over me. My father’s awake. What does that even mean? Dennis jerks violently, his screams growing faint, like a radio losing its signal. His hands twitch against the chains, and his eyes roll back as his voice dissolves into a choked gurgle.
The pig thrashes wildly, its jaws tearing free a ragged strip of flesh with a wet, tearing sound that sends a shiver straight through my bones. The phone clutched in my hand buzzes again, but there’s no way I’m answering it. I know it’s the clinic calling again. The blood spills faster now, pooling in thick, glistening puddles on the floor, its sharp, metallic scent curling up into the air, choking me. The pig’s frantic grunts fill the room, guttural, urgent, almost gleeful, and the sound wraps around me, suffocating.
But underneath it all, under the chaos, under the noise, there’s only one thing I can hear.
The thud of my heartbeat.
Heavy and relentless.
Like a countdown.
For a moment, I forget where I am.
I’m not in this shed, not here with the blood or the pigs or the screaming.
I’m a little girl again.
I’m trembling on the hard wood of my father’s office floor, the sharp scent of whiskey and sweat clinging to his clothes as he leans over me, his voice thick with sermons and snarling justifications. I’m back in the cellar, staring up at the cross on the wall, hearing him call on God’s name, invoking holiness like it was a shield to cover his sins.
A sharp, desperate cry jerks me back to the present. Dennis’s voice, hoarse, pleading.
Begging for mercy.
Mercy?
I almost laugh. A dry, bitter sound lodged deep in my chest.
God won’t answer you, Dennis.
He never answered me.
I drop the phone, the clatter lost in the chaos around me. Without another glance at Dennis or the pig, I turn and walk out of the shed, my steps unsteady as I head toward the truck. My mind spins, a thousand thoughts colliding at once.
My father is awake. And everything is about to change.
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Morning light comes with pale, gray bleeding through the clouds, hitting my windshield just so. My eyes sting from the lack of sleep I got last night. Between the unknown of what I’m walking into today and the mess I know I have to clean up once I get this over with, sleep was the last thing on my mind.
The highway unfolds before me, a long, cold ribbon of cracked asphalt cutting through the frostbitten hills. My fingers choke the steering wheel, knuckles blanched white as the truck hums beneath me. Forty minutes. That’s all it should take to reach the nursing home. But tonight, the road feels endless, every mile stretching thin like elastic pulled to the breaking point.
The cab is thick with silence, the only sound the faint whir of tires against ice-dusted pavement. My pulse thrums in my throat, sharp and uneven, matching the restless jitter in my leg.
The doctors called it persistent vegetative state. It all sounds so clinical, and sterile. A neat little term to explain why my father’s eyes open everything morning while nothing behind them stirs. Severe brain trauma, they’d said. He breathes on his own, something he’s been doing since the second week after the ‘accident.’
No ventilator.
