Duty

The clock read 4 o’ clock. Lei put down her book and got up. It was time to go. She drove to the hospital, her mind unnaturally calm, unexpectedly clear. It was ironic, perhaps that a dying man, who deserved nothing but the loneliest of deaths would have the one person he hurt the most during his lifetime by his deathbed. But that was how life was to be and Lei had learnt a long time ago to stop questioning why things happened the way they did.

It did not take her long. It was as though Fate had cleared up her path to that final chance of a confrontation.

The old man was lying sunken and shriveled in bed. It was almost as though the bed had begun its task of swallowing him whole but had decided that he was unpalatable at the last moment. And yet, the sight of his broken body, already halfway there on its journey into the next world, was enough to make Lei hesitate for a moment and compose herself before she walked into the room.

Her father stirred at the sound of feet which were driven by his blood.

“You’ve come,” he stated simply.

“You had asked for me,” she replied.

“Yes, I had. But I never expected you,” spoke Lei’s father, snubbing her even with his last few breaths.

It took all the composure and resistance built up over the years for Lei to not react. She had expected as much. The old man had never bothered with much affection in her case, reserving all his love for her younger brother. Again, she ignored the irony of her brother canceling at the last minute saying that he had to stay home to make his son study for tests – the same brother whom the old man doted upon, and spent all his evenings teaching.

“You had asked for me,” she repeated, a little louder this time.

“Well, you will have to do,” he said.

“I guess I will,” said Lei.

The old man sighed with all the strength left in his lungs and said, “I’m dying.”

Lei kept her voice as steady as she could when she said, “I know” although her eyes almost betrayed her.

“I may not even last the night.”

The doctors had told her as much. They had even added how the cancer that had spread from her father’s lungs to almost all his major organs, had miraculously spared his brain, leaving him lucid enough to speak and endure all the pain. Yet, he did not have much time. All those years of smoking had ruined his body and it was fed up of putting up with the abuse.

“But you are here, so sit by my bed. Sit by your dying father.”

Lei was already there before he had asked. Perhaps it was the haze brought on by all the morphine in his system, or perhaps it was only that he was blind to all that Lei did, but he seemed to not have noticed. His first born held his frail hand firmly but gently in hers. It was how he had held her when she was born, but the roles were now reversed and his life was at its end and not beginning.

She stayed silently sitting while her mind returned to the past. She tried not to, but she kept thinking of the times when the old man had blamed her harshly for the most trivial of things. He had called her the worst person imaginable, a selfish and despicable human being when she, as a ‘responsible’ nineteen-year-old had given in to temptation one day and single-handedly finished that chocolate bar in the fridge, meant for the whole family. Her brother, on the other hand, had been let off with the gentlest of rebukes when he had stolen the money given to him to buy medicines for his mother.

Her father would always make his displeasure known whenever she, back when she was financially dependent on him, had to spend his money. He even disapproved of her spending the money that she earned the way she wished to. He had refused to speak to her on the day she had moved out of the house. She had lost the phone-number that he had asked her to write down – an act which could only have shown how disrespectful she was of him, and he had been upset. 

Her father had always denied the possibility that he, who was always fair and always just, could ever have hurt her in any way. And after all those years of steadily weakening ties, Lei had learnt to live without his love and with the hurt. 

But for all the times she had vowed not to be there when her father died, here she was, holding his hand, waiting for the end to come.

“Why was I never good enough for you? Why did you hurt me so much?” quivered Lei, when the silence became unbearable.

“Why! That’s not possible. You were always hurting me!” he croaked.

And those were his last words to her.

Her husband was waiting for her at the hospital entrance. She was pale and wan and he only had to look at her to know that the old man had passed on. They were both quiet as he drove her back home.

“Why did you go alone?” he asked, once home.

“It was something I had to do,” she said.

“But I would have gone with you!” he insisted.

“No. I needed to do this on my own.”

He did not question her further, but held her close. It wasn’t long before she was weeping copiously.