Zemira

The sight of our family doctor's car in the driveway sent a shiver down my spine. Worst-case scenarios ran across my mind, firing up my feet. I tossed my purse on the round, marble-top table that decorated the entrance and rushed into my father's bedroom.

"What happened?" Heaving for air, I asked. "Is everything alright?"

Dr. Walsh looked up at me as he removed the blood pressure cuff from Dad's arm. A soft screech from tearing the cuff off dragged my attention back.

My father waved his hand casually, inviting me to join him on the bed.

"Nothing happened," he said.

Dr. Walsh's eyebrows bridged as he jotted down the prescription. He always smiled if things were fine.

"Doc, is Dad alright?"

"Yes," my father answered. "It's just a routine checkup."

"No, it's not." Walsh countered, leaning closer to me. "Your father is lying."

I stood on the opposite side of a table near Dad's bed, nesting every piece of equipment which the doctor carried during his visit.

I never liked them, especially the array of syringes and needles he carried in his brown briefcase. As a child, those assortments scared me. I used to hide under my bed during high fever, trying to avoid being injected.

"Your father complained of dizziness. So, I got him checked." Walsh straightened on the chair, running a hand through his eyebrows and wiping it down his sunken cheeks. "His pressure shot up and let me tell you, Zemmy, it's not the first time it has happened."

"Dad." My tone shot up. "Why didn't you tell me this has happened before?"

My father palmed his face, sighing behind his hand-held veil. His well-guarded secret wasn't supposed to come out but it did.

"Dad, I'm asking you something."

He had no answer to my question. What he had was a smile. A wide grin, admitting his guilt.

"Walsh is making up stuff." Was his retort. "He likes stirring trouble."

"Shut up, Grant," the doctor countered. "Zemira needs to know."

"Know what, Uncle?" I moved from Dad's side to join Walsh. "Tell me."

Being able to tower over his stout build, I peered at the doctor with a gaze so intense, I could feel it heating the back of my neck.

Uncle Walsh had known me since my childhood. Even before being our family doctor, he was my folks' friend. Needless to say, my dad never took his advice very seriously.

Walsh moved away from the table, holding my elbow and dragging me with him.

We ignored Dad's rant, asking us to stop plotting against him and his incessant vows to break his friendship with the doctor.

When nothing worked and we walked outside, he ceased his whining.

"It's not good, Zem. And the reports confirm the same."

Walsh uncurled his frown; two fingers running over the sides of his mouth and down his throat. If it wasn't for my knowledge about his strength in delivering bad news, I would have assumed he would be crushed under the weight of his own words.

"What does the report say?"

"Your father's health is deteriorating. BP is very high, 170 over 120. And so is cholesterol. I'll increase the dosage but what Grant needs now is rest. Complete rest."

"I tried, Uncle, but..."

I didn't try harder. I didn't push Dad's buttons enough for him to let go of his stubbornness.

"You know he won't ask you to help but he needs it."

"I'll talk to him."

"You do that."

I was a fool to think Dad's exhaustion was only due to his age. I was an ignorant idiot who didn't notice he needed a break. No, he needed retirement.

Walsh walked me back to the room.

Dad still sat on the bed. With arms crossed over his chest, lower lip pouted and eyes rolling at every step we took, he resembled a child who was denied his wishes.

"Stop being so grumpy, Grant." Upon the doctor's instruction, he sat up from his sunken form. "You're not a child."

My father didn't answer. What he did was puff up his face.

The silence in the room vanished when the doctor tore prescription papers and grabbed a plastic pill container from his bag that rattled in my hand.

"For now, give him two tables to bring down his pressure." He pointed at the prescription. "I'll check on him tomorrow."

Giving Dad a curt nod, the doctor walked out with me.

His concern-filled face remained frozen; the struggle of a worried friend was clear. He turned to me while his hands scanned the insides of his pockets for the car key. Sliding inside, he looked up.

"Call me if there's anything," he said. "And don't let his puppy eyes fool you." The engines rumbled. "He needs proper rest."

And he drove away.

I stood in the driveway long after he left, drinking up the gas fumes while devising a plan to ease off Dad's burden. Some part of me was determined to take over everything from him and let him rest.

The rational side of my mind spewed logic.

I still needed to learn a lot from my father. I needed to be patient with myself while he recovered.

As I walked towards his room, determined to narrate my decision, I saw him tiptoeing out of his bed.

"Where do you think you are going? You are supposed to be resting." I asked.

Dad turned around, smiling. The corners of his eyes crinkled. "And you were supposed to be at Debby's party. What are you doing, coming back so early?"

I held his elbow and walked him back to his room.

"You don't have to walk me," he said. "I'm more than capable of walking by myself."

"The only thing you're capable of right now is acting like a baby."

"You are a baby." And bit into his tongue when he realized he proved me right.

I tucked him into his bed, ensuring his medicines and water was nearby.

They say what goes around comes around. It remained true for me.

As a child, my father used to tuck me into bed. He'd even stand outside the room, waiting for me to walk out of my bed and try playing with my dollhouse after he switched off the lights.

I was doing the same to him. The only difference was I was an excellent toddler while my father was a rule-breaking one.

The moment I moved towards the door, I felt a soft plop on the mattress. Dad tossed off his bed cover and sat up.

"Daaad. What are you doing!"

"Zemmy..." He waved his arms in the air like an inflated human balloon. "Walsh is brainwashing you. I'll get a new doctor for myself who'll declare me fit and fine."

I walked back inside, gently pushing him back to bed while he continued groaning like a baby.

When I tucked him beneath the cover again, dragging a chair near his side, he looked into the ceiling, huffing. "I'm being punished for no reason."

"The choice is yours. Either listen to me and rest. Or I'll sit guard for the whole night and when Walsh comes tomorrow, I'll ask him to admit you to a hospital since you are not listening to me."

"Fine. But I want ice cream."

There hadn't been any other day when I witnessed him being any more of a child than today. Granting him his wish, I sat next to him on the bed, gobbling a spoonful of chocolate ice cream.

"I wanted hot fudge too," he complained. My father was testing my patience to show how irritating he could be if arrested on the bed. "I don't want bland ice cream."

"You'll get nothing more. Just eat your ice cream and then we'll have dinner."

"Kiddo..." He placed his bowl on the table and turned to me. A pillow rested his elbows as he slanted his chin over his knuckles. "How bad is it? Give it to me straight."

"It's not bad now. But we don't want it to turn bad so..."

"So..."

After joining therapy and accepting my past with both its traumas and happiness, I also decided to take over the Ford business one day. Little did I know, that day wasn't far away.

"Instead of you, I'll be going to New York to oversee the developments," I said. "I'll have Haley take over from here. She's a quick learner so I don't have to worry much."

"You still have a lot to learn, Zemmy."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Dad," I said. He leaned closer, nesting my head over his shoulder. "You'll be guiding me as always, right? And the rest of it, I'll learn on the job."

"Are you sure you don't want me to help? I can come with you and oversee-"

"Dad, no. You are going to rest. Period. It's high time that you start spending the money that I'll be bringing."

Chuckling, he took the ice cream bowl to finish my favorite liquidy part.

"May I know why you are not at Debby's?"

Leo's words replayed in my ears. Seeing him slit my heart, the pain emanating from the gnashes of his words set an avalanche of anger.

I didn't realize a person could change in a matter of months. Talking to Leo, I knew something was different. I'd encountered a modified version of Leonardo Brenton. A change that wasn't for the good.

"I met Leo," I said. "But he felt different. Like he was masking something... I don't know but it was like I was meeting a different person or something."

"Wars do that to people. The things they witness. The blood bath they encounter, the lives they're responsible to protect...Everything takes a toll on a human being."

"He looked like he didn't know me, Dad. Like he didn't want me there or if he could, he would have run away from me."

"Maybe he wasn't still being himself." Peering at a distance, his face diminished. "Maybe he's suffering in ways none of us can understand."

"Maybe. I don't know. But something felt odd."

"Did you tell him about the letters?" Dad asked. "About when you received them?"

"Between trying to think of what to say next and to look at him more, I forgot."

I saw Leo after five months. I wanted to drink up his image than waste time narrating the debacle of the postal service. I wanted to imprint his face, his body and his brooding looks in my mind.

Leo and I could read each other well. That was my assumption. Seeing him at Debby's I had a feeling that it was the last time I would be seeing him.

Something told me that he was running away from me and not towards me. The same understanding, that had earlier convinced me that Leo was in terrible pain at the hospital.

I concluded it wasn't some newly developed conscience that conveyed what Leo felt. It was my heart, my soul and what I felt being close to him. Or even away.

We were tied through an invisible string that connected our conscience, our pains and our pleasures.

"Maybe it's time you both sit and talk about what you both want and clear out the misunderstandings." Dad didn't speak further.

Instead, he moved off his bed and walked towards his closet, opening one specific part of the cupboard that made my heart pound harder into my chest.

"Here, have this." He pulled my open palm, placing something cold over it. "She would have wanted this to be yours."

Mom's cufflinks rested in my hand. I looked at the matt-finished, silver cuffs with her initials, L.

She wore them before any important meeting, believing it brought her luck. An unconventional woman, my mother had a specific pale blue shirt that was designed for her to wear any accessory.

"You need it now," Dad said, wrapping my palms around them and kissing my knuckles. "I knew this day would come in the future when I'll pass on her heirloom but I didn't know it would be today."

"I need a shirt too that would go with it." I chuckled.

My chest, my gut felt waves of serenity hit over and over. It was her legacy that I was going to carry. Lawrence Ford was a great woman, a greater negotiator and the greatest mother anyone could ask for.

If I had even an ounce of her qualities in my blood, I'd consider myself lucky.

"You know these aren't just cuffs, right?" Dad unhooked the pin piece behind the letter and placed a pressing button instead. "It can be earrings too. Or put a hook on it and it can be part of your bracelet. You chose, how you want to fashion it."

My vision flooded. A warm, gooey sensation ran from my back to my gut and into my throat, I hugged my father with all my might.

He let out a soft ouch to taunt me before embracing me with the same pressure. Same care.

"Your mother will be so proud of you, kiddo."

"She'd be proud of us, Dad."

My father didn't give me one gift but two - his faith in me being the other.

I believed it was his unconditional support and love that strengthened me to face the turbulent life I was about to encounter.

~

One could conquer the world if they have the love and support of their family.

Do you agree?

Let me know in the comments, how you think Leo and Zem will meet again.