Trapped in his End Game (Series)

Keep calm.

That’s what I tell myself, over and over, as his gray hand lies limp in mine and his chest rises and falls with a horrible rattling sound that makes my blood race. My thumb runs over and over the protruding veins on his hand, one that I know very well. How many times did he catch me when I tried to run across the street?

Slow down, Marisa! You’re going to get hit by a car.

A watery smile spreads over my face when I think about how he used to chase me around.

Now he’s confined to this bed with a million tubes feeding his body with drugs. My eyes wander over him to the white walls.

Nathan leans against the wall in the hospital room, watching me, his eyes curiously dry. Finding no comfort in my brother’s gaze, I turn back toward my father’s face. He looks, or at least I think he does, at the ceiling. He looks from side to side, searching or scanning for something, his dry lips murmuring nonsense.

“Dad?” I whisper. “Can you hear me?”

I lean closely over the hospital bed as I ask him for the thousandth time. I’m desperate just to hear something from him: a grunt, an insult, anything that would indicate he isn’t beyond our reach. But he already is.

Dad’s dying.

It hits me like a sharp slap to my face. My face and eyes burn, but I swallow the tears down. Tears won’t help Dad.

Hell, nothing will.

Even if I spent all the money in the world to pay for the best doctors and the most advanced treatments, I still wouldn’t be able to stop the inevitable. Death: the universal equalizer.

“You know he can’t hear you.”

Nathan’s arrogant voice digs into my brain and I raise my head to glare at him, hating him. He never cared about Dad. He hasn’t shown an iota of remorse that our dad is dying this entire week. What’s wrong with him?

He looks away from my stare. “Sorry.”

How many times have I heard that from him?

Slipping my hand from Dad’s, I stand up and decide to make a brief trip to the cafeteria. I haven’t eaten in-I don’t know how long. The phone in my purse vibrates in a constant murmur-Dad’s associates wondering what the hell happened to their CEO. Nathan’s rings silently, too. They have questions I have no interest in answering. I’m just trying to be there for my dad. He’s all I care about right now.

I sweep past my brother without a word, but he shifts and I hear him following me out the door.

“Marisa, wait-”

He grabs my arm and makes me halt in my tracks. The tight grip on my wrist forces me to look into Nathan’s icy eyes.

“He’s my dad, too. I don’t understand why you treat me like I’m some kind of viper.”

Because you are.

The countless lies he sang into my parents’ ears, and how in family photographs he used to pinch my sides so roughly that tears would stream down my face, and the countless times he blamed me for something he did run through my head. Jessica and I learned to fear our brother at an early age. He was prone to violence, but he was smart-he never left a mark. I just wanted us to get along. We were a family, after all. It’s important to get along with your family, no matter how awful they can be.

He mellowed out in his twenties and became one of the most successful men I know. When I think about my brother, I can’t help but feel a mixture of gut-wrenching fear and awe.

Sure, he was a bastard when he was younger, but he isn’t anymore. I don’t know why I can’t let it go. It just still stings, even after all these years.

“When I-if I get the company, I’ll make sure you and Jess get a fair share.”

Jessica isn’t here. She decided that her time was better off spent getting a mani-pedi, and she’d booked it ages ago.

At least Nathan’s with me.

If only I could look at him and see the handsome, polite, capable man everyone says he is and not the cruel boy who taped my pet frog to a stick and beat it to death against a tree because I used one of his favorite CDs. He used to slap Jessica’s face when she was a toddler. All of that rage-it didn’t go anywhere. It’s just hidden inside him. Everybody hides their demons. Buried feelings wrestle inside me.

That was a long time ago. He apologized. All of these feelings are just getting in the way of mending things with him.

Dad hated it when we argued. He said it made us look like a dysfunctional family. Sometimes I blamed myself for not letting go, because a lot of the fights were my fault. Because I was still angry. Even though I said I forgave him, I never really did. More than anything, I’d like to never have to deal with him again, but then an angry voice creeps in my head. It’s not good to fight with family. You have to put up with them, because they’re blood.

I have to stick it out because Dad needs me.

My hand slides out of his grasp. “You think that’s what’s bothering me? Our father is dying.”

His finely shaped eyebrows pinch together. “Marisa, I’m not a monster. Dad owns a huge company. He’s been away for a week and there are probably thousands of things that require his attention right now. You and I will have to pick up the slack.”

Nathan and I, running Dad’s company?

“I don’t even want to think about it.”

My voice shakes and he slides an arm around my shoulders, and I curl into his chest. He wraps his arms around me and I cry, finally succumbing to tears. Nathan changed when he got older. He’s different. He became the protective, slightly possessive older brother who I looked up to. He helped me learn the ins and outs of the casino business, and introduced me to Dad’s associates.

“We’ll be fine, Marisa.”Copyright Nôv/el/Dra/ma.Org.

His soothing voice burrows in my chest, giving me comfort, even if it’s not the kind of comfort I seek.

What about Dad?

Dad won’t be fine ever again.

* * *

After bolting down a dry muffin and searing hot coffee that burned my throat on the way down, I head back towards Dad’s room. The white walls burn as I pass by, the equally bright, polished tiles underneath my feet bouncing all the light from the ceiling into my eyes.

I step inside an elevator and smash the fourth floor button. The stainless steel reflects my haggard reflection.

Code blue. Fourth floor. Code blue.

The cold, female voice barely registers in my head when the doors ping open to the fourth floor. My coffee still burns my hand. I’m hoping that the strong smell might rouse my father. He always had to have his coffee in the morning or he would complain of migraine headaches. I step out of the elevator to a small commotion. Doctors in white coats and nurses in scrubs hurtle down the hallway inside a room. The same room Dad’s in.

A cold feeling grips my heart like an icy hand reaching in between my ribs. I toss the coffee inside a garbage can as panic slowly rises in my throat like vomit. Sprinting down the hallway, I hear raised voices coming from the hospital room and Nathan stands outside. He gives me a wide, anxious look.

“Marisa, he’s-”

Something’s wrong. I look inside the room, and the doctors seem strangely still. It’s like they’ve given up.

“Time of death-”

“NO!” I elbow my way inside, heart hammering when I look at the tubes shoved down Dad’s throat. How dare they give up on him so easily? Don’t they understand? Don’t they realize how important this man is? “Try again!”

“Ma’am, you need to leave the room.”

A doctor wearing a surgical mask addresses me sternly. I scan the group of indifferent nurses and doctors and feel a surge of loathing. “Don’t you dare give up on him! He’s donated tens of thousands of dollars to this hospital. You owe him.” Tears silently fill my eyes. “Please!”

I can’t look at my dad. I can’t see the way his cheeks have already sunken in and feel how cold his hand has gotten. It’s like dry ice.

“Ma’am, please. We tried everything we could-”

“No, you didn’t!” I scream so loudly that the walls seem to tremble. “He just needs a little bit more time, for God’s sake. Can’t you just-Nathan, help me!”

My brother squeezes through, his eyes narrowing at me. He grips my shoulders and pulls me away from the bed, away from Dad. “Marisa, it’s over.”

I fight him, shoving his chest away from me. “Shut up. No, it’s not. You’re just-”

“Marisa!” he bellows in my face. “He’s gone. He’s gone.”

Blue eyes cut into mine, the razor sharp clarity slicing inside me. My heart beats heavily, as though it throbs with a knife stuck inside.

He’s gone.

Dad’s bare feet have a bluish tinge and his face is sunken in like parchment paper draped over a skull.

Oh, Jesus. My Dad-my rock. He’s gone. Gone.

How could this happen? People recover from strokes all the time, and Dad had the best doctors looking after him. I made sure of that. I called in every favor I had and pulled strings to get the best. Even the best wasn’t enough.

“Time of death, 6:32 am.”

Nathan holds me tightly. He’s the only man left in the world-the closest thing to my father. Dad! I want to scream. Don’t go! Don’t leave me!

I can’t do this without him.