A/N This might not make sense now but it might just serve as extra information for the chapter. The story is currently taking place in about 2009 or so. So there is an airport in Bloemfontein but due to the fact that we hosted the 2010 Fifa world cup, many airports in SA underwent massive renovations and there were times when there were no flights coming in or out of certain airports which is why they had to take a flight from Cape Town to Joburg and then drive up to Bloemfontein.

The handbrake of his rental car was too stiff for his liking. It was a pain to pull up and even worse to drop but besides that, it ran just a little too perfectly. He almost wished it had given him problems or stalled or stopped entirely just so he wouldn't have to walk back through those glass doors.

He had every intention of staying in his hotel room to complete his work but he couldn't have possibly ignored Dr Cornelius' call asking him to go back in. Riaz's feet felt like lead as he walked slowly through the massive sliding doors. The smell of Dettol and hand sanitiser burnt his nose as he walked past the foyer. He ignored the patrons in the coffee shop and the scent of freshly baked cakes as he made his way down the sterilised hallway. It was white and bleak and the paintings on the walls did nothing except collect dust along its wide frames. The smell of bleach grew bolder as he made his way towards the ICU. The hums of the monitors and machines did nothing to soothe his mind and the taste of nicotine on his lips only served to feed his need for more. He knew they could smell the smoke on his clothing. He did nothing to mask the fact that he had lit up stick after stick since that phone call and even the ache in his chest did nothing to quell his desire for it.

Dr Cornerlius' white hair was visible from down the hall. He had just vacated Zaheer's room and was too focused on the clipboard in his hand to notice Riaz walk right up to him.

"Why did you call me here?" The smell of ash caught his nose before he heard his voice and it was always a marvel that he had to crane his head to truly look at the younger man in his face. His father was tall but Riaz had surpassed him with inches to spare.

The words because he's your father  were meant to escape the doctor's lips, but as he caught sight of Riaz's exposed wrist, the words had instantly faded away.

After all these years, the marks on his arms had never truly disappeared. They had lightened but they were still there and every single ounce of shame and guilt he had felt only seemed to have returned tenfold as he looked at them.

"Let's take a seat out here, okay." He led Riaz to the small lounge set tucked away in an alcove around the corner, gathering his words as they walked. "You're aware that your father suffered a massive stroke."

"Yeah, you mentioned it on the phone."

"The thing is," he licked his lips, wiping his hands along the seams of his trousers in order to distract himself from Zaheer's true condition, "your father's body is shutting down."

"Shutting down?"

"Yeah, his organs are failing. His kidneys have already ceased entirely and it's only a matter of time before his liver and lungs and heart follow suit." He said, hesitant to look up at Riaz's face. He didn't know what he would see.

Or he simply just didn't want to see it.

"We can't stop these things from happening. Your dad is pretty old and we can try to help him but we can't stop the inevitable from happening."

He looked up, wary of the silence that had followed his words. Riaz's posture was stiff and his face had turned to stone as the doctor's words played on repeat in his mind.

"He's dying?" He asked, astounding Dr Cornelius with his blunt question.

He regarded the young man quietly, wondering what his old friend could have done that had rendered his children's hearts to rock. They didn't even care that he was dying and it was only truly evil men who died with no kin to mourn for them.

He didn't want to believe that his friend was truly evil...

He couldn't have been.

"Yes," Dr Cornelies' voice soft and thick, "he's dying."

Riaz simply nodded his head, allowing for his words to wash over him as he waited for the man to continue.

"I need you to do something for him though."

Riaz could feel his lips curl up all on its own. Why would he possibly believe that Riaz would actually do anything for him? "What?"

"I need you to phone his mother and tell her that her son is dying."

His mother.

Riaz looked at him, confounded at his request. He knew he had a grandmother and he knew that his father had a family but they had been isolated from them for so long that he had simply chosen to believe otherwise. He couldn't believe that his grandmother would truly care. He never thought of his father as a devoted son so why would a mother care for him.

"And where am I supposed to find her number?" He asked purposefully stalling the inevitable. He wouldn't do it and the fact that the man before him expected him to was simply ludicrous.

"He keeps it in the last draw of his cupboard." Dr Cornelius answered, unnatural surety in his voice.

"How would you possibly know that?" Riaz looked down at him, assessing him truly for the first time in all these long years.

Who was the man before him and how did he really know Zaheer?

"We studied at Wits, your father and I. He had moved there from somewhere and even though we were at the height of the Apartheid, no one could deny his brilliance. He was pretty light skinned so I guess that made it easier for everyone to pretend that he was just another white boy." Dr Cornelius smiled, having found himself transported to the late 60's in just a blink of an eye. "He was my biggest rival in the boxing ring."

Riaz looked down, stunned that the skinny, old man before him was once a presumed great boxer.

"I was undefeated and so was your father and when we found ourselves pitted against the other it was as if all hell had broken loose. No one had a right hook like him..." He shook his head, unaware that after all those years, his voice still held a tone of admiration as he spoke about him, "No one. He knocked out 3 of my teeth in one fight." His hand went up to his cheek, caressing a phantom ache that had struck him once again.

"We could never truly claim ourselves as champion over the other and eventually our rivalry turned into friendship and that friendship had spanned our entire lives."

He waited for a response, for anything, even a glimmer of a reply but he received none except a blank look.

"I know your father better than anyone else and I know that you'll find that number in the last draw of  his cupboard."

He couldn't believe it. Riaz didn't want to believe it. He didn't want to believe that someone who had known every intimate detail of his father's life could still hold admiration towards him.

"I know you hate me." Dr Cornelius said softly. "I know that I always turned a blind eye but..."

"But what?"

What could he possibly say to the young man before him? How could he possibly tell him that he couldn't simply forget decades of friendship even though he had seen the worst of Zaheer? How could he tell him that he was scared to lose his job over what his oldest friend knew about him? How could he tell him that he nothing but a loyal coward?

How would Riaz ever believe him?

He shook his head and stood up, fishing something out of his deep coat pockets."Your dad's house key." He said softly, opening Riaz's clenched fist to drop the small set of keys into his palm. He didn't know if Riaz would do it but he believed in him. He wanted to believe that he would do it.

But he simply did not know. And he walked away, unable to ask him again.

Riaz had waited until he could no longer see the man anymore. He couldn't put his feelings into concrete thoughts. He was transported to a state of absolute surreal disbelief. There was never even an instance in his life where he was not afraid of Zaheer. His father was always too big for him to defeat and his presence was always too large and powerful for him to ignore. His father was the man who beat him, who burnt him, who defeated him, who broke him, who hated him, who despised him, who forced him to become weak in front of him.

But his father was never Zaheer. He had never, ever thought about his father in any other terms except that which caused fear to well up in even the most obscure corners of his heart. He didn't want to believe that his father was anything else and he didn't want to believe that others could see him as anything else.

He dug out his phone from his pocket and scrolled through his contacts with shaky fingers. He stood up, walking to the entrance as it began to ring and seeing nothing else except the bright sunlight streaming through the massive glass doors. He pulled his box out of his back pocket, squashing it unthinkingly as pulled out a cigarette from its slight opening. The phone kept ringing and he was about to blast it at the wall across from him when he heard her voice on the other end...

"Will you do something for me?" He asked before she could even greet him properly.

"What?"

"I know you don't want to come back here but please can you come down." He finally stepped out into the parking lot, immediately reaching for his lighter as he leaned against the prickly stone slabs along the whitewashed walls. "I need to do something and I can't do it by myself."

He could feel her hesitancy, it almost shouted and screamed and yelled in his ear but he needed her.

"Okay," her voice was soft, soothing his ear as she spoke, "I'll catch a plane to Joburg tonight and-"

"I'll fetch you from the airport." He said, cutting off any plan she might have concocted.

"No, Riaz. It's a 3 hour drive down." She argued.

"I don't care." He said, stubbing out his cigarette in the green ashtray above the bin beside him. "I'll leave now and wait for you."

She was still speaking to him when he got into his car and started the engine and as her soft voice flitted through the speakers, he found that he was able to breathe normally once again...

Tasneem didn't know if he had even slept the night before. He had deep, dark circles beneath his eyes and his fingers were tapping against his steering wheel so erratically that it was nothing but a blur of white skin against the black vinyl. He hadn't said a word to her since they had left the airport and had chosen instead to fill the silence with the gentle voices of late night radio. By the time they drove off the N1, it was past 11 at night and there was not a single car on the streets with them. It was eerily quiet and growling cats from a nearby veld almost gave her the shivers. Everything still seemed so familiar to her. She had driven past this road hundreds of times and every sign and door front and shop window still looked exactly the same.

She thought it odd that in the 5 years that they had been married, this was the first time they would be staying in a hotel together. They never really had the money nor the time to actually go on a holiday and it was something of a strange feeling to know that their first trip together would be to the one place neither had ever wanted to see again.

They pulled into the hotel parking lot almost half an hour later and when he got out of the car, it was the first time that night that she had seen his body sag under the exhaustion of it all. "Did you eat anything?"

He shook his head as he lifted her bags out of the boot and guided her towards the elevator hidden behind one of the larger cement pillars. She wanted to point out the fact that he must have driven past hundreds of restaurants on his way to the airport or walked past the 6 restaurants from the parking lot to the arrivals section of the airport itself but one look at his blank gaze had her closing her mouth immediately. He most likely didn't even realise that he was hungry at all.

She found his hand as they stepped into the elevator, curling her fingers gently around his own. He squeezed her hand gently before he dropped her bag and pulled her forward as he wrapped his arm around her waist. He didn't care that he had to bend down to do so nor did he care that she had to stretch on her toes to wrap her arms around his neck...

He just needed to hold her and he needed her to hold him back.

That was all.

***

They were settled around the small table in the corner of the room. She couldn't say she was a fan of the complimentary condiments but they couldn't be fussy over the hotel's choice of coffee and creamer. He was holding onto his mug so tightly that she thought it would shatter in his hand.

"What happened?" she asked, unable to hold the silence for much longer. "You haven't told me a thing on the phone."

He sighed, looking into his cup as if it would hold all the answers to the doubts plaguing his mind.

"My dad is dying."

Oh

"I don't feel sad that he's dying." He said, as if explaining his feelings more to himself than to her. "I don't feel anything about it." He finally looked up at her, his eyes looked dull and lifeless. "Is that a bad thing?"

Her smile was soft and sad, "No," she cupped his cheek in the palm of her hand, running her fingers over the rough stubble along his jaw, "You can't help how you feel."

He nodded, receding back into his mind once again.

"What did you need to do?" she asked, removing her hand to pick up her cup once again.

He drained the contents of his cup before setting it back gently onto his saucer.

"I need to go back home."