They Said I Was Adopted, but I Was Always the Real Daughter novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: The Priest

I woke up in a hospital bed with antibiotics running into my arm and a man asleep in a chair.

It was Gael.

He was folded into the plastic chair with his boots stretched across the floor, and the teddy bear was tucked under his elbow.

A nurse in the doorway saw me looking.

"He wouldn't leave," she said. "We tried."

"Fever?"

"Thirty-nine and a half last night. It's down. Your counts are very low right now, so we keep you in a room with a door, and nobody comes in who's sneezing."

She went away.

Gael opened one eye.

"Your father's outside," he said, without moving. "He's been here since three. He's washed his hands about forty times."

"Is that for me?"

"For the sink, I think. He's afraid of it."

I laughed, and it hurt my throat.

My father came in wearing a paper mask and a hospital gown over his shirt, and he stood at the end of the bed holding his hands in front of him.

"Gael stayed," I said.

"I see that."

"Somebody had to hold the bear," said Gael, and finally sat up.

My father looked at him for a moment.

"Thank you," he said. "I mean it."

Gael nodded and took himself out to find coffee, which I think was a kindness.

My father sat down.

"The cardiologist saw me yesterday," he said. "It's a routine check before the donation. They'll finish it this week."

"Dad, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer it properly this time."

"All right."

"Why didn't you ever say anything? Not that day. Any day."

He took off the paper mask and folded it in half, and then in half again.

"Because every time I tried, your mother would look at me," he said. "Not angry. Frightened. Like I was going to take something from her. And I would tell myself that whatever she was afraid of was real, and that it was worth a little silence."

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