Chapter 6 I Already Hate You #2
The words hit harder than I expect. When I came here today, I swore I was ready to tell him goodbye and never see him again, but the way my heart is in my throat and my short nails are digging into my skin tell a different story,
Jerry jolts at them too, chest heaving, panic threading through every harsh breath. His fingers grasp at the air like he’s trying to hold on to something that keeps slipping away.
“No…no hospital,” he coughs, shaking his head.
His eyes stay glued to me, wild, terrified, pleading in a way I’ve never seen from him—not once in my entire life. I used to see it in the way Mom would look at him, pleading him to stop.
This storm raging inside me is more than I can handle, and the urge to scream at him that he made his bed and he should lie in it is strong.
“Please,” he mouths.
I take one step toward him before I even realize I’m doing it.
Because I don’t want to touch him. I don’t want to comfort him.
I don’t want this to be happening. Not when I’m still angry.
Not when I still don’t know what is real and what is manipulation.
Not when I don’t know what the hell is wrong with him.
But the fear in his face makes everything inside me twist. I can't deny it.
Another coughing fit crashes over him, his body jerking forward. The nurse immediately presses a towel to his mouth, her jaw tight when more red blooms across the fabric.
She looks at me again. “I have to call them.”
I swallow and nod because there’s nothing else to do. Nothing I can fix. Nothing I can do.
The nurse steps toward the hall to call for help, leaving us in this small, stale room that suddenly feels too quiet, too full of all the years between us.
Jerry’s head lolls back against the chair. His breath rattles, but his gaze stays locked on mine—desperate, terrified, clinging.
“Stay,” he mouths again.
Damn it. I don’t have a choice, do I?
I hold his hand and stay.
“Are you the next of kin?” A doctor walks out to the waiting room where I’ve been sitting for the past hour. I thought about driving home, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk away not knowing if he was going to make it.
Truth is, I don’t know anything about the man, including what’s going on with his health. For all I know, he could die tomorrow, and I wouldn’t know why.
“I guess I am.” A loaded answer, but the only one I can give.
“He’s stable,” the doctor says, landing like a stone dropped into deep water—relief first, then the slow-spreading dread underneath it. A trickling effect I wasn’t expecting.
I stand too fast. “What…what happened? He was coughing blood. He could barely breathe.”
The doctor face softens. “I know. We were able to get his breathing under control. The bleeding has stopped for now.”
“For now?” I echo.
The doctor folds his hands in front of him, like they show in movies. Just like the one who came to tell me my mom didn’t make it five years ago. This is about to get sticky.
“How much do you know about your father’s history?”
None, I want to answer. “Not much. We’re not close.”
He points to the chairs where I was sitting as he guides us over.
“Your father is in acute renal failure, which you may already know.” I don’t, but I can’t make my mouth say the word no.
“His kidneys aren’t working well enough to filter waste or excess fluid from his blood. That’s why he’s been on dialysis.”
“Dialysis,” I repeat, searching for answers nobody’s giving me. “He said he was dying.”
“Well, yes and no.” He lets out a breath.
“Dialysis does the job the kidneys normally do, practically filtering or cleaning, if you will, the blood. But when someone misses treatments, or their kidneys get worse faster than expected, toxins and fluid build up.” The doctor pauses, searching my face.
“That buildup can cause shortness of breath, confusion, and sometimes, fluid can back up into the lungs. That’s part of what happened today. ”
“So he was drowning,” I say before I can stop myself. “Inside his own body.” Go fucking figure. The body he drowned in the bottle is drowning him from within.
“In a sense, yes,” the doctor answers softly, like he wishes he could say something kinder or have better news. “He also had a small amount of bleeding from his airway, likely from the coughing and irritation. So nothing major, but we need to keep an eye on it.”
“He looked…terrified. Has this happened before?”
The doctor’s voice gentles even more. “Episodes like this can be very frightening. When the body can’t clear waste, it affects the brain too.
He probably felt like he was losing control.
And although this particularly hasn’t happened before, he has had other emergencies because he misses treatment. ”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure. Some patients need more support than others to make it.”
I rub my hands over my face. “So what now? Is he…is he dying?”
There’s a pause.
“He’s not dying tonight,” the doctor says carefully.
“But kidney failure is serious. Dialysis keeps him alive, but it can’t fix the kidneys.
He’ll need consistent treatments and close monitoring.
And he can’t miss treatments; we need to find a way to keep him motivated and attend the days he’s supposed to, or he will die. ”
“Would he need a transplant?”
“He’s on the list, but that can take a long time. They can get a living donor, but those usually come from friends and family.”
I scoff, because he doesn’t have either.
“In the meantime, he needs to get his treatments, and he needs to rest.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s asking for you,” he confirms.
Of course he is. That’s how this goes. I tell myself I’m ready, but my heart is already pounding as I follow the doctor down the hall—each step toward the room pulling both the past and the future with it but barely crashing in the present.
I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to be here, but I need to make sure he’s doing okay.
He’s alive. He’s stable. But that was scary, and I need to figure out what he actually wants from me. Maybe it’s a kidney, and that’s why he reached back out.
“Hey,” I whisper, entering the sterile room in the ER.
“I didn’t think you’d be here,” he says, trying to sit up, but I raise my hand to stop him. The last thing I need is for this man to get sicker trying to talk to me.
Even now, I’m still trying to look after him. Pathetic.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay and talk to the doctor about your health.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For everything.”
“Well, there’s a lot that can fall into that everything.”
He lowers his head. “I know, and I don’t take it for granted that you’re here.” He coughs, lying back down completely.
“You need to rest.” The understatement of the century.
He doesn’t reply, and I’m thankful for the reprieve. Today has lasted a million years, and I’m ready for ice cream and my bed, but I can’t leave without knowing one thing. “Do you want a kidney from me? Is that why you reached out?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m not asking you for that. I want to get to know you again before I…” He lets the words trail off.
“The doctor said you can live for a long time without a kidney. You need to come to treatment for that, though.”
“Yeah, but what for? Maybe this is my penance.”
I keep my head low, counting the small dots between the grout lines I’m sure, once upon a time, were white.
“I’ll leave you to it. Bye, Jerry.”
I turn, but his croaky voice stops me. “Holden.” He coughs. “I get my treatment three times a week, and my next one is tomorrow. If you’d like to stop by. They last about four hours, and I’m willing to answer any questions you may have.”
“The doctor says you miss treatments all the time.” Is this what he wants? Companionship so he can attend the lifesaving treatments he needs? Unbelievable.
“I’m willing to do them if it means I get to tell you. For what it's worth, I think you deserve to know everything, even if you hate me.”
I scoff.
I already hate you.
The words threaten to leave my lips, but they don’t. I might be angry, but I’m not cruel. I definitely didn’t get it from him, though.
“I’ll leave your name on the door, just in case.”
“Goodbye, Jerry.” They’re the only words able to leave my lips as I walk to my car and contemplate his offer.
Do I want answers? Yes.
Do I think he’ll give me the absolute truth? No.
I drive home in silence, engulfed by my emotions and everything I learned today.
I hate it, this feeling of being out of control.
I hate not knowing what’s real and what’s not.
But above all, I hate that I want to take him up on it.
I don’t know that I can live with myself, knowing I could do something to save a life and I didn’t, even if it’s his.
I want to know what he meant today. I want to know everything.
He’s the only person who can give me the answers.