"Fabala! Come quickly, please!"
The urgency in Nessarose's voice made Elphaba reluctantly tear herself away from Fiyero's letter and run down the creaking wooden stairs. Not finding her sister in the living room, she directed her steps towards the room that had been occupied by their father, and, as suspected, found Nessarose waiting by the door.
"Oh, Fabala, thank Oz," she gasped, pointing at the door; tears streaming down her face. "It's father… I just went in to see him. He started coughing so terribly, but when I tried to take his hand, he almost hit me; he screamed at me to get out… And I worry, Fabala…I'm not so sure that he's going to make it anymore."
She broke into sobs and Elphaba felt her heart shatter, knowing that Nessarose was not ready to see their father go.
"I doubt I can do anything," he said sadly, stroking her sister's arm, "but I'll go in and see how he's doing, if you want me to."
Frexpar's room was almost entirely flooded with darkness – the heavy red curtains drawn, only a small candle burning in the corner. He lay in bed, unmoving but breathing heavily, and when he heard Elphaba enter, he struggled to raise up his head.
"Who's there?" he demanded apprehensively. "Melena? Is that you, my dearest?"
Elphaba stopped dead in her tracks. This what the first time in many, many years that she heard anyone, let alone her father, mention her mother's name.
"Melena? My love, is that you?"
She wanted to correct him, but something in his weak voice and his unseeing eyes changed her mind.
"It's me," she said softly and her voice trembled. She sat down at the edge of the bed, which seemed to calm Frexpar down.
"Thank Oz," he muttered. "Oh, Melena… I thought you'd left. I thought you'd grown tired of me, the poor fool, bewitched by your beauty from the moment I saw you. I was certain you'd grown to hate me."
Elphaba swallowed hard.
"No," she said, trying to sound as calm as she could. "No, of course not."
He reached blindly in her direction and it took Elphaba a few seconds to realize he was
scrambling for her hand. She fought with herself before closing her fingers over his.
"You should rest, Fa—Frexpar," she said; and he let out a strange sound, probably meant to be a chuckle before it erupted into another coughing fit.
"I suppose you're right," he said weakly, having caught his breath. "Would you sing to me first, my dearest?"
And she did. She sat by the man who had despised and mistreated and belittled her all her life, and she comforted him with her mother's song of a beautiful land over the rainbow, where no harm ever happens to anyone. He closed his eyes and his breathing quietened, and by the time the song was over, his fingers were cold and motionless under Elphaba's hand.