Seeing the expression of unconcealed fury on my face, Tera rose quickly, knocking the tray of hospital food to the floor, scattering too-green peas and globs of potatoes to every corner of the room. My nose was filled with an unpleasant mixture of disinfectant, cold and astringent, and grape Kool-Aid, which my father had previously been drinking.
“WHAT THE HELL?!” I screamed, not bothering to differentiate my hatred to either one of them in particular.
Tera, seeing my face, no longer smiled, but was looking at me with a combination of confusion and fear, and said, “Luna, what’s wrong?”
“Don’t play stupid with me now, backstabber! I just heard what you were talking about! So it isn’t enough to ruin my career, you have to ruin my family too?”
“Luna…” called my father, softly.
“Not you! Her.”
He turned away, with the thousand-yard-stare of a veteran who has finally surrendered to an especially vicious enemy. No emotion showed at all.
Tera stared at the ground for a couple of seconds, appearing embarrassed. “It’s just…” She paused.
“It’s just what?” I asked, staring at her down-turned head with such hate that I expected her hair to catch on fire from its intensity.
“It’s just…I care for you so much. We were coworkers, friends. And we were something more than friends, best friends. At least that’s what I thought. Even though we were so close, there was always something between us; I could always tell you were hiding something. It had to be about your family; your childhood stories were just a little too perfect, something had to be wrong. It felt like I was watching a perfect family on a sitcom. Nobody’s that perfect, Luna. So I worried.”
Now she looked up at me, with an expression nearing pity.
“And it might be callous and it might even be cruel, but I saw my chance here to learn more about you. I may have betrayed your trust, talking about you behind your back. I may even have lost your friendship forever, but it’s all because I care. I was your closest friend, and I know neither of us will ever forget that. Don’t you remember our friendship? The Disneyworld opening? The weekend excursions to the beach? The midnight launches?”
Despite my hatred, I couldn’t help but remember. Those were some of the best memories I had, certainly better than those with the apparently uncaring man lying in the hospital bed. I thought about the way she crinkled her eyebrows when she laughed especially hard. I thought about the conversations we had once had as we walked through NASA’s corridors to the cafeteria with the rest of the staff. I thought about the times we had stood with some of the other workers near the launch pad, watching in awe as the rockets bearing satellites climbed into the sky, achieving something we had once thought we could never do. I had made so many great memories with her; there was no way I couldn’t feel positively towards her. No, Luna! Hold on to the hate! She betrayed you! After all that work, the sleepless nights and restless days, she tried to ruin it all, to make it worthless! And she’s still trying! But it was useless. I could never completely hate her, there was too much of a connection between us. Did I feel betrayed? Yes. Was I angry at her? Hell, yes! But was I willing to completely dissolve our friendship? The answer, as I slowly discovered, feeling slightly ashamed, was “no.”
Coming to my senses, I realized that I had been standing, looking at Tera but not seeing her, silent for quite some time. She was still staring at me, though, and my father remained motionless.
“Go now,” I whispered, in a tone of quiet acquiescence, no longer feeling the hatred in either my gut or my voice. “I need to speak to my father. Alone.”
She looked up at this and slowly gathered her things. As she walked past me, she tried to put her hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away, still not meeting her eyes. “No.” I whispered.
The sound of the door clicking shut was the loudest sound I had ever heard.
Walking over to my father’s bed, his back was turned to me. He had pulled the sterilized sheets to his chin, making them draw taut around the curves of the stumps where his legs used to be. As I drew closer, I could see his tiny movements, hear his sharp breaths. When I rounded the corner, and could finally see his face, I saw the tears falling.
He was crying.
HE WAS CRYING!
I could feel the anger rise inside me once again, my vision beginning to shake and blur. What right does he have to cry?! Does he know how many times I went to bed, crying to myself? How many times I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up, all because of the things he said? But even as I began to clinch my hands into fists, tensing all my muscles in preparation for violence, I could tell that he was talking through the tears. His voice sounded like it did after a six-pack in front of the TV, but I knew he was completely sober; the hospital had seen to that. It was the same four words over and over again, blurring into one, never-ending sentence. “I…love…you…Luna.”
And just like that, my hatred fragmented, falling, in pieces, down into the recesses of my mind. All I knew was that this weeping, pitiful man, shuddering from sheer emotion, loved me. The years of hatred, of abuse, of psychological torment were pushed to the background of my mind. I would never forget them, I knew, but they simply did not matter at that time. Sitting down on the bed, I placed my hand on the side of his head and smoothed his greasy hair, damp from sweat, in a way I had always wished he had done with me. I don’t know how long we sat there, but I know the sun was rising when I looked down and saw that he was asleep, tears still drying on the pillow beneath his head. I slowly rose, careful not to wake him, and walked to the door. After I stepped into the hallway, hearing the latch catch behind me, I turned and stared at that medicinal off-white door separating me from him.
“I love you too, Dad.”
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