My breath becomes more and more labored as I lay broken on the ground. Blood pours out of my open wounds with every beat of my heart. I'm past the screaming phase. I'm past the sobbing uncontrollably phase. I'm at the praying-I-die-soon phase.

"You ready to confess now, son?" Dad growls standing over me. He takes another swig from his fifth bottle of beer. Or maybe it's the sixth… I don't know and honestly I don't care anymore.

I don't respond to his question. He thinks I took the stash of money he saves for beer. I don't know who stole it, but it wasn't me. And I'm not going to say I did it. That would be lying and lying is a sin. Mom wouldn't have liked that. "Still nothing, huh?" He kicks my already swollen abdomen and I cough up about another pint of blood. "I can do this all day, boy." He rubs his hands on his pants to wipe them clean of my blood.

My brother Sam stands in the doorway. His face is as pale as mine. "Dad, please-" he tries to say.

"Shut it, Sam!" Dad roars. "Shut it or you're next." I gasp like a fish out of water as I try to push myself up. I stop moving when every molecule in my body screams. "And where do you think you're going?" Dad straddles me, then kneels on my chest. Spots begin to dance before my eyes. He places his hands around my neck and starts squeezing. "Tell me where it is," he spits into my face.

The thought crosses my mind that it would be impossible to tell him when he's choking me, but that thought quickly flits out of my grasp. I'm too busy battling the darkness that's encroaching around the edges of my vision. Some primitive survival instinct takes over and my arms actually move. My hands claw at his forearms, but I'm too weak to even break his skin. I all do is make him even more angry. He squeezes even tighter. I feel my eyes starting to pop out of their sockets. The darkness moves even faster and soon I'm looking through tunnel vision. I feel the life draining out of me, much like my blood is. I get farther and farther away from the pain. Farther from the hunger. From Dad. From life. I almost let go of the edge of the cliff and fall into the chasm yawning below me when someone bangs on the door.

"Police, open up!"

"What in the hell?" Dad's grip loosens as he turns to look towards the door. "Who called them?"

"I did," Sam replies, stepping out from the shadows. "You were gonna kill him, Dad. What else was I supposed to do?"

"You little…" Dad stands up and tries to regain his balance. As he drunkenly struggles to keep the world from spinning around him, Sam sprints past him and opens the door.

The officer on the other side of the door points his drawn pistol at Sam. After he sees that he's no threat, the policeman scans the room with the gun extended away from his body. Once he sees Dad with my blood all over his clothes, he aims at him. "Put your hands in the air and get on your knees!" he yells. "Do it now or I'll shoot your knee caps off."

Dad does what he's told with a dazed look in his eyes. I don't think he knows this is real life. Actually, I don't think about anything. Nothing registers, not even when the paramedics lift me on to a stretcher. Once in a while, some stranger will come into focus. I'm not sure if it's the same stranger every time, but I remember thinking they were angels. I was really looking forward to seeing Mom. I missed her so much. Reality slams me hard when I hear Sam's voice. I can't be dead if I hear Sam, so where am I? "It's okay, Nate…" His voice fades in and out like a badly tuned radio, but I get the gist of it. "Everything's gonna be alright. I'm won't let anything happen to you ever again. I promise… I promise…"

Suddenly, I get the feeling that I'm falling, or rather, I'm being sucked into something. "Sam?" I call out. "Sam, help me! Sam!"

"Dad?" says a familiar voice. It sounds like it belongs to a little girl. "Daddy?" To my little girl.

I suck in a deep breath as I open my eyes to a dark room. I pinch myself and I know I'm not dreaming anymore. "Daddy, are you okay?" Elizabeth's two big, gleaming eyes search my face questioningly.

"Yeah, I'm okay, sweetie." I'm not, though. I haven't had that dream in years and I terrifies me to think why it decided to turn up again.

"Who's Sam?" she asks.

"Nobody. It was just a dream, Lizzy. Everything's okay now, you can go back to bed."

"But I had a bad dweam, too." She sticks her fingers in her mouth and starts to suck on them. It's a bad habit. She must have gotten it from me. I used to suck my thumb.

"Bad dreams run in the family, kid." I mentally punch myself for inadvertently turning into Sully. "Hop on up and tell me what's wrong."

Elizabeth tries to climb the side of my bed, but it's too high for her to reach so I bend down to pull her up. "Der was a monstwer in my dweam, Daddy."

"A monster? What kind of monster?" I cuddle her closer to me, careful not to squeeze too hard. Sometimes I forget how fragile she is.

"A big, scawy monstwer! He stomped and the gwound shaked. Then he woared like dunder." She shivers and buries her face in my shirt. "Make it go away, Daddy," she whimpers.

"Only you can make it go away, Lizzy. Just think about something else, like rainbows or sparkles or…" I try to think of some other girly thing.

"Cookies!"

"Or cookies," I agree.

She heaves a deep sigh. "I miss Mommy."

"Me, too. But we're picking her up from the airport tomorrow. Isn't that exciting?"

"But I want her now. I want a song."

"What if I sang you a song?" The very thought of singing makes me nauseous, but I would do anything for Elizabeth. "Would that make you feel better?" She nods, rubbing her head against my ribs. "Okay, my mom used to sing this to me when I was young:
Sleep come easy to your bed this night,
Seven angels hold you in their light."

I haven't sung in forever. It had lost its charm. My rough voice evolves back into its silky smooth tone that I had developed when I was younger. I don't mean to toot my own horn, but, damn, I sound good.

"One holds the candle, one holds the crown,
One holds the moonlight shining down."

Elizabeth's tensed muscles relax. I feel her little heart beat slowing down. I stroke her arm to the rhythm of the lullaby. She sinks down deeper into my ribs.

"Dream of fortune in the world below.
Seven angels in the afterglow.
One holds a lantern deep in the mine,
One holds the daylight left behind.
One holds the lightning, flashing then gone.
One holds the sun waiting 'til dawn."

Her chin droops and I know she's out. I cradle her in my arms and carry her to her room. The bed seems to swallow her up. Maybe Elena was right about her comforter. She was afraid Elizabeth would be crushed under the weight of the thick blankets, but I insisted she needed the extra thickness to keep her warm. I wanted her to feel like a princess. I wanted to give her everything and more. Sully was right about paternal instinct. My first priority is to protect her from the world. "I will never let anything happen to you," I whisper, brushing a strand of hair off her face. "I promise."

Song credits: Hem, "Seven Angels"

Also, if you didn't know, Nate apparently has an older brother named Sam.

And though it's never stated what Nate's father was like, but I always sort of had a feeling that Nate was beaten as a kid. That's why he's so close to Sully, but has trouble showing it. He wasn't loved until he was 15 and by then it was too late to learn how to show his feelings.