I Barely Knew

I barely knew my father. By the time I was 4 years old he left my mom and I. As I got old enough to understand what that meant I hadn’t seen him in 3 years. At first my mom made different excuses- your father is moving away for his job, we don’t love each other anymore, we’ll be living in different houses- the usual stuff. When I was a preteen I coaxed my mother into telling me the truth and she finally told me he was an alcoholic. She told him to choose us or the bottle – he chose the drink.

I barely enjoyed my teens. I was sick a lot and spent a lot of time out of school. When I was 14 I had seen a lot of specialists and was finally diagnosed with a rare cerebrospinal fluid mutation defect. It’s not exactly cancer but the tumors that are created that often develop into a cancer, and if it gets into the brain even a tumor can be fatal.

I was barely clinging to life when I turned 20. The doctors told me about a new genetic replication procedure that could give me a small chance of not producing new tumors. It wouldn’t get rid of the old ones I already had but it would at least give me a fighting chance. The only problem: the spinal fluid for the procedure had to come from my father because my mother didn’t have the same blood type. The last man on Earth I ever wanted to see again was my only chance at beating this. The guy that never bothered to pick up the phone to wish me happy birthday. The guy who never knocked at the door to say he’s sorry. The guy who liked a liquid more than he liked his own son. What if I ask him and he says no?

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The last man on Earth was sitting in a shabby wooden chair in a small room when, suddenly, there was a knock at the door.


© Marc Noël 2016
(Inspired by Arvanaut Idol January 26, 2016)