Daddy Dearest

Chapter Seventy One

BEN

The sterile hospital room is a prison cell, an unyielding reminder of my brokenness. I'm trapped in this white-walled purgatory, shackled to the relentless beep of the heart monitor and the slow drip of IV fluids. Headaches torture me, gripping my temples like a vice before releasing a torrent of nosebleeds that stain my pillow crimson.

"Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats flits through my mind, a lighthouse amidst these stormy seas of recollection. I cling to every word like a drowning man to driftwood, desperate for comfort. "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains my sense..." I murmur the words aloud, though they jumble in my mouth like marbles, tumbling and clattering against one another.

"Mr. Davenport?" A nurse peeks into my room, her eyes filled with concern as she takes in my disheveled appearance. "Are you alright?"

"Fine," I lie, forcing a weak smile. "Just trying to remember something."

"Would you like some help?" she asks hesitantly, unsure whether to intrude on my private moment.

"Thank you, but no," I reply, closing my eyes as I grasp for the next stanza. "I have it." The words are fickle, slipping through my fingers like sand. "Almost...got it."

"Alright then," she says, leaving me to my reverie. I feel an odd mixture of gratitude and annoyance at her departure; the solitude is both suffocating and comforting.

"Darkling, I listen; and, for many a time I have been half in love with easeful Death" – the verse echoes in my mind, a soft chant warding off the fevered dreams that haunt my waking sleep. Keats' melancholy ode wraps around me like a shroud, insulating me from the uncertainty that gnaws at my soul. My memories are wisps of smoke, curling and twisting as they tease me with their elusive nature. Are they real? Or merely figments of a shattered mind?

"Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme" – I recite the line as if it's a talisman against the nightmares that claw at the edges of my consciousness. Words have always been my refuge, my sanctuary; but now they betray me, slipping through the cracks of my fractured memory like water through cupped hands.

"Ben?" The voice is familiar, a lifeline that anchors me to reality. Waverly stands in the doorway, her green eyes filled with concern as she takes in the scene before her. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing, love," I lie again, forcing a smile that feels more like a grimace. "Just remembering."

"Ode to a Nightingale?" she asks, a hint of sadness in her voice as she steps into the room.

"Of course," I reply, trying to sound more certain than I feel. "It's...comforting."

"Ah, yes," she says, a wistful smile ghosting across her lips. "I remember you used to recite it to me when we first met."

"Did I?" I ask, startled by this revelation. It's yet another fragment of my past that remains out of reach, taunting me with its elusive nature. "I wish I could remember that."

"Sometimes," she says, her voice barely a whisper, "I do too."

"Maybe one day," I murmur, the words tasting like ashes in my mouth. But even as I say it, I cannot shake the nagging doubt that lingers like a shadow, swallowing all hope. "Do I wake or sleep?"

~*~

The sterile hospital room surrounds me like a tomb, its relentless whiteness swallowing my thoughts as I struggle to reassemble the fragments of my memories. A susurrus of voices and footsteps echo through the hallway beyond my door, but in here, I am alone. The only company I have are the ghosts of my past, haunting me with whispers of what once was, or maybe what never was at all.