Sub Terra: Et Reditus

Sixteen

Daniel

The ten-day quarantine period had finally passed, and it only meant one thing: I was going to meet my dad.

It was mid-afternoon when I was told by Sammy, one of the nurses, that I was allowed to see him. I found Gus in his room in the house I was sharing with him and Devi.

"Gus, we're going to visit him." I told him straight up.

"You seem nervous, are you sure you want to go now? Or do you want to wait until you're a bit more calm?"

I was going to be nervous regardless. This was going to be the first encounter with a man I hadn't seen in almost 19 years, one I knew next to nothing about and was considerably ill. I didn't want to stall it any longer.

"Yes, I'm sure. Sammy's waiting for us. We need to get going."

"Gotcha."

We left the house and we met up with Sammy outside. We followed her through the confusing, congested streets of Aït Benhaddou, passing carts, donkeys and roadside street stalls. It was Friday, one of the most popular days of the week in Moroccan culture.

After nearly 10 minutes of twisting and turning through the crowded streets, we made it to a large house which served as the village's makeshift hospital, decorated with an Associated Medicine banner.

Inside was a living room filled with rows of chairs — a waiting room. The kitchen served as a triage area as well as a receptionist desk. There were four rooms on either side of a short hallway behind the kitchen — patient's rooms. At the end of the hallway was a flight of stairs leading to a floor where the rooms for the more stable, healthier patients were.

Sammy spoke to the receptionist in broken French. After a very brief conversation, she turned to Gus and I.

"Your dad's fit enough to see you. Come with me."

We nodded and we found ourselves in front of a room on the first floor. That meant that my dad wasn't in the best of conditions. The first floor would be reserved for patients who were immobile.

Gus put a hand on my shoulder and smiled at me.

"There's nothing to be afraid of."

He seemed to understand my feelings. I didn't what to expect to see or hear in the room. Naturally, I was a little scared.

"Go inside when you feel ready." Sammy said, and with that she left Gus and I alone.

Gus took the lead and opened the door. I waited behind him.

"Hi, Mr. Sterling," he said in a quiet voice. "I'm Gus, one of Daniel's friends."

A brief silence filled the air. An almost haunting silence, one that made my spine shiver.

"Is he with you, Gus?" A husky, mature voice said, belonging to none other than my father.

"Yes. We're coming in now."

Gus' was now completely inside the room. In the middle of the room, on a hospital bed backed up against a wall, my dad sat up. His appearance was alarming.

His shoulder length hair was grey, with strands of white occasionally appearing. His skin was pale, with light red dots sprawling sparsely on his bare chest. He was practically reduced to a bag of bones. It was like the life itself had been drained from his body.

He looked nothing like the teenager I'd seen in Mr. Watanabe's photos taken at the beaches in Honolulu, where he was a wall of muscle with thick dark locks of hair on his head. He was now a shell of his former self. I pulled up a chair near him and sat on it.

"You look a little hairier than the last time I saw you, Jess." He said with a smile that took lots of strength to form. My jaw dropped as he spoke my mom's name, my lips unable to produce any words. I stared at his eyes. They looked weak — unsurprisingly — but they held an unexplainable warmth.

Thinking back to my reaction when I learned from Aries that my dad was alive, my emotions at the time didn't make sense. How was I able to tear up at that news of his survival but not even bring my self to utter a word in front of its very subject?

Had I been at the verge of tears due to the fact that my promise to my mother had finally been realized, or could I not speak now because I was now accepting the fact that he wasn't some lost soul anymore? Or was it that I didn't feel any connection to him due to not having a single memory about him?

"J-Jess?" I muttered loud enough for my dad to hear.

"I'm just messing with you, Danny." He softly chuckled.

I laughed with him too, albeit nervously.

"You've grown so much, Danny. I wish I was there to see it happen."

For the first time ever, I began to feel bad about him. To be away from your family, and not see your child turn into an adult must've been painful. But it also gave me a sense of pride. It was a sign that he acknowledged me.

"You look just like your mother now. You two have the same beautiful brown eyes. The same perfect nose."

"Do I really?"

It wasn't like anyone else could've told me that I had similarities to my mom.

"If you were a girl, you'd be her carbon copy. It's good that you don't look like me too much."

A sudden thought came crashing through my mind. If my dad was alive this whole time, and not in jail, then why didn't he come back? Why did I have to be in Morocco sitting at his bedside and not in Ciudad 22 playing a game of soccer together?

"Where have you been this entire time... I mean, why didn't you come home? Why did you stay here even though you weren't in jail?"

"Jumping to that already? Well, not too surprising, given these... unfortunate circumstances. But you'll need to understand the full picture to know why. The entire journey."