heartstrings

Chapter 50

Nicholas
March 17, 2018

Eve was lying on my chest, her soft breathing the only sound in the sterile hospital room. The rhythmic rise and fall of her body was soothing, but my mind was far from calm.

I stared at the ceiling, eyes tracing invisible patterns on the blank white surface.

Eve's hair, a golden cascade of tangled strands, rested under my fingers, and I absentmindedly twirled a lock between them.

The quiet should have been peaceful, but it only gave space for my thoughts to run wild.

Everything felt surreal. I should have been relieved that the worst was behind me, but the future loomed over me like a shadow I couldn't shake.

My chest tightened as the weight of it all bore down on me. How did I get here? What was I supposed to do next? I had no answers, just an overwhelming sense of being trapped in a life I couldn't control.

A loud knock jolted me out of my thoughts, the door swinging open before I could respond. My father and stepmom barged in, not even pausing to consider whether they were welcome. My father's expression was pinched with the usual annoyance, while my stepmom hovered behind him, awkwardly clutching their child to her side. She gave me a tentative smile that felt more like a grimace. Sympathy? Maybe, but it was hard to tell. Everything about them grated on my nerves.

"Nic," my dad's voice cut through the silence, harsh and demanding as always. "How long do they plan on keeping you here?"

I barely registered his words, too caught up in the anger bubbling inside me. He didn't even wait for an answer, just kept throwing questions my way, each one more pointed than the last. I could hear him muttering under his breath, something about how he didn't deserve a son like me. One of his remarks was louder than he intended, and it took everything in me not to snap at him.

I could feel the tension in the room rising, like the air was being sucked out, making it hard to breathe. My stepmom must have felt it too because she stepped forward, trying to break the silence. "When do you think you'll be coming home, Nic?" she asked, her voice overly sweet, as if she could somehow smooth over the situation.

Home. The word tasted bitter in my mouth. "I'm not," I said flatly, my voice cold and final. "I'm never stepping foot in that house again. I don't want to see him again." I didn't need to clarify who I meant by "him."

That was all it took for the thin veneer of civility to shatter. My father's face twisted in anger, and the fight I'd been holding back finally erupted. Voices clashed in the small room, harsh and unforgiving. My stepmom tried, unsuccessfully, to calm us down, her voice a soft pleading in the background that neither of us paid any attention to.

"You're ungrateful!" my dad spat, his eyes narrowing with contempt. "After everything I've done for you, this is how you repay me?"

"Everything you've done for me?" I echoed, my voice rising with disbelief. "You mean all the times you've made me feel like I'm not good enough? Like I'm some kind of burden you have to carry?"

It is so weird to me how my own father could show little sympathy and understanding for me.
My relationship with my father used to be good- great even- but he's changed.

Now it just feels like I am drowning and he is standing three feet beside me telling me to learn how to swim.

"You don't know what you're talking about," he snapped, and then, almost as if he couldn't stop himself, he said something so vile, so cutting, that it sliced through whatever fragile restraint I had left.

"I don't know how your mother could ever have loved you Nicholas, because i never did"

I feel grief towards both of my parents- i grief my mothers presence but i grief the person my father used to be.
I see a human in my father, but i don't see an ounce of humanity.