Before the Last Breath

He hadn’t planned on coming. He told himself it wouldn’t matter, that it wasn’t his job to deliver closure to a man who’d torn him open. But something pulled him there anyway. Some old instinct, maybe. Or the itch of unfinished business that had nested in the scar tissue of his brain for decades.

The hospice room was too quiet. One of those rooms where even death seemed to tread lightly. The old man lay in the bed like something already partially gone. Hollowed out by time, oxygen tube wrapped around his ears, chest rising slow like it wasn’t sure it should keep trying.

He stood at the door for a long minute. Didn’t knock. Just watched.

“You look like your mom,” the old man rasped, voice like rust under gravel.

He stepped inside and let the door fall shut behind him.

“Don’t,” he said. His voice flat. Heavy. “Don’t talk about her.”

A pause. Then just, “Alright.”

He sat in the cracked vinyl chair across from the bed. It creaked under him, like everything else in that place was trying to pretend it hadn’t been through the ringer.

“I wasn’t sure I was gonna come.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

They sat in the stale quiet. The smell of antiseptic and dying flesh hung like damp sheets.

“So what is this?” he said finally. “Some kind of deathbed tour? Trying to square up with all the people you broke before your big exit?”

The old man shifted. Winced. Coughed up something he didn’t quite have the strength to spit.

“I didn’t ask for you.”

“No. But you’re not telling me to leave, either. That’s new.”

He leaned forward, elbows on knees. Fingers steepled. Not praying. Just keeping the rage from trembling out through his hands.

“So maybe I’ll say what I need to say. Since your lungs can’t fight back anymore.”

The old man nodded. Just barely.

“You ruined me,” he said. Quiet. Controlled. “Not just the beatings. Not just the yelling and the backhanded threats. That’d be easy to file away under ‘tough childhood.’ No. You made it darker than that.”

The air got thick. The machine hummed.

“You cracked me open and crawled inside,” he said. “Taught me that love had rules. Taught me that trust had a price. That touch wasn’t safe. That bedtime wasn’t the end of the day—it was the beginning of something I had to survive.”

The old man’s mouth twitched. Maybe guilt. Maybe just the death rattling his jaw.

“I was drunk,” he whispered. “I was broken too.”

He laughed. Bitter and dry. “So you decided to pass the baton?”

“I don’t remember all of it,” the old man said.

He stood. Walked to the window. Looked out at a half-dead palm tree that had no business being in this part of town.

“You think that makes it better?”

“No. Worse.”

“That’s right,” he said. Turned to face the bed again. “Because I remember all of it. I remember the smell of bourbon on your breath and the way the hallway felt longer at night. I remember the sound your belt made sliding through the loops, like some executioner warming up. I remember the weight of your body. The way you made me believe it was my fault. That it was me that was wrong.”

“I’m not asking you to forgive me.”

“Good,” he said. “Because I’m not here to.”

The silence came again. The kind that didn’t feel empty. Just full of things they’d never said.

“I’ve been carrying this,” he said. “Like a parasite in my chest. Every relationship, every job, every goddamn mirror I’ve ever looked into—it’s there. Whispering. Judging. Telling me I’m still that kid, still broken, still used up. You get old, but it stays in you. It shapes how you breathe. How you love.”

The old man’s eyes glistened. Not with tears. With knowing.

“You ever tell anyone?”

“Eventually,” he said. “After years of silence that felt like acid. After therapy that left me crying in parking lots. I told someone. Then I told more people. But it never left. It just moved deeper.”

He stepped closer to the bed. Looked down at the man who used to loom like a mountain and now barely looked like a man at all.

“You stole my childhood. You robbed me of safety. You made me question if I was even worth protecting. And I’ve spent my whole goddamn life trying to prove I am.”

The old man swallowed. It sounded painful.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered.

“No. Not yet.”

He waited. Stared.

“I’m sorry,” the old man said again. Louder. More breath behind it. “I’m sorry for the bruises. For the nights. For making you carry what was mine. I was supposed to be the protector. And I was the threat.”

He let the words settle. Let them sit there in the sterile air like old blood under a blacklight.

“I’m walking out of here with my head up,” he said. “Not because of anything you said. But because I’ve done the work. I faced it. You laid it on me, and I carried it, and I kept going. You don’t get my forgiveness. But you also don’t get my hate. Not anymore. I’m done bleeding for you.”

He turned.

“Do you hate me?” the old man asked.

He paused at the door. Didn’t turn.

“I did. For a long time. But hate’s heavy. And you don’t get to live in my head rent-free anymore.”

He opened the door.

“Don’t come back as a ghost,” he said. “I’ve got enough of you in me already.”

And then he left. The door shut behind him. The machine kept humming. And the man in the bed, surrounded by silence, was left to die with the truth finally spoken. Not clean. Not healed. But real.

And the man who walked away didn’t feel better. He didn’t feel free. But he felt done. And that was enough.