You may have seen this chapter before, previously titled 'Chapter Seven'. If you have, please ignore it.

Chapter Eight

"Where was he?"

"Mm?"

"Sonic. Where was he?"

I look up from my hands. I'm sitting in the chair beside his bed. I've hardly left this chair since he got here. He doesn't like it but at the same time he's glad, if you know what I mean. Like he wishes I would go home and stop thinking about him for three seconds at a time, but he's glad I won't leave.

Well if it were me, I wouldn't want to be alone.

"Dad…Sonic's not coming."

"He's not?"

"No."

Dad coughs a little and rubs at his face. "Why ever not?"

"He doesn't care."

Dad looks at me and I know he's genuinely surprised by this. I know sometimes he pretends age has affected him more than it really has, since that's usually the only way to get certain truths out of me, but hey, I don't understand it either.

"He doesn't care. Is this a new development?"

"Dad, this has been going on for…for four months now. After mom…after the accident, after we got through all that, Sonic stopped caring about anything. He just started to fade. Then one day he left."

"And he refuses to look back."

"Yeah. That's about it."

Dad's just looking at me and it's one of those looks parents give you that makes you uncomfortable.

"Do you really think he's finished with you?"

"Dad, it's pretty obvious that Sonic doesn't give a shit about me! One day he got up, sat on the porch, and then left in the middle of the night without saying anything. He doesn't write. He doesn't call. He hid himself from us. And when Knuckles called him, and told him what's what, you know what he told Knuckles?"

Dad just keeps looking at me.

"He told Knuckles that he didn't know who I was! So do I think he's coming? No. He doesn't care. He only cares about himself. I hate him. I hope I never see him again."

"You don't mean that."

"Yes, dad, I do! I mean it! Fuck Sonic! He can have his…his whatever he's got. I don't want to see him, I don't want to talk to him, I don't want him to exist, and as a matter of fact I hope he gets hit by a train because I wish he was dead!"

"Son, come here a minute." My dad's sitting up a little more and it's only then I realize I'm crying my eyes out. I feel just so…so…I don't know, but not good. Like saying all those things has made something inside me sick and rotten.

I go to my dad and he hugs me. I feel really bad because I know how he feels about me being so worried about him all the time, and I know he's trying to think of what to do if…if he dies and I'm left alone, but there really aren't that many options. He was counting on Sonic coming back. He believed Sonic would come back. But I'm just so scared and worried and I feel so bad inside that I can't stop crying, even though he doesn't need that right now.

"Miles," he says after I calm down a little.

"Yeah dad?"

"I'm going to say something you're not going to agree with."

"Like what?"

"Keep your faith in Sonic."

"Dad, he denied my existence! Why would I keep any faith in him at all?"

He can't talk for a minute. His breath is catching in his throat again and he's getting too weak to cough. When he can breathe well enough he asks, "Did you ever think about why Sonic left?"

"No."

"Think on that, Miles. Maybe there's a reason he left. Maybe there's a reason he's saying he doesn't know you."

"He left because he was bored!"

"No, I don't think that's it."

"Why?"

Dad looks at me and then at the wall across the room.

"You don't cut yourself off from people you love because you're bored."

"Maybe he didn't love me."

"Oh, he does. I would bet my life on that."

"Well I'm not taking you up on that one, dad."

"Maybe you should! I know I'm not doing that well, Miles, but I'm not out of the running yet. Don't worry so much."

"Yeah, sure dad," I say, wiping my face and rolling off him to sit on the bed beside him, "and maybe if I stopped worrying so much you'd get younger."

Dad laughs, but it hurts him and it doesn't last long. But still, making him laugh a little is better than not at all. He yawns and scratches his head.

"You tired there, dad?"

"Unendingly so."

"You want to go to sleep?"

"Hell no, but these things cannot be helped."

I move over and he lays back down more. Not quite lying down, because he actually doesn't want to go to sleep, but enough so that if he does fall asleep he won't be super sore when he wakes up.

"Hey dad?"

"Mm?"

"They said they want to put you on oxygen at night."

He snorts and shakes his head.

"If anything is going to degrade my already sorry performance, that, my boy, will be it."

"Well…you haven't gone through the night without waking up choking for two weeks now. They knew you'd be stubborn about it, that's why they waited so long to mention it. But now they're saying it's kind of really important."

"Kind of really."

"Dad," I say, and I look him in the face and give him my best grown-up-you-better-listen-to-me look, "it's just been luck that you wake up when you can't breathe. A lot of other people just die in their sleep."

"It's a good thing I'm not any of those people, then."

"Dad!"

"Son, if I start using that thing, I'm not going to be able to breathe on my own at all."

"We're just waiting for the medicine to start working right, you know that."

"Mm-hmm."

He sighs and shifts his shoulders a little, shuddering and supressing a cough.

"Stop doing that, dad!"

"Stop doing what?"

"You have to cough, dad. Your lungs are full of mucus. You have to get it out. You know, so you can breathe?"

"Charming," says my dad, but tries not to cough anyway.

"Some old nurse is going to come in and not leave until you do."

"Sounds like fun, but I'm busy at the moment, she'll have to make an appointment."

"And they're giving you a saline drip tomorrow."

"Shit," says my dad, frowning, and he only swears when he's really mad. Which I've hardly ever seen. "So I'm pretty much dead, now, is it?"

"Well…"

He scratches his head again and rubs his eye. "Goddamn, Miles, it looks like I've about had it. I guess you were right."

"About what?"

"I waited too long. I didn't take it seriously. They're going to turn me into a damn vegetable and then it's going to be over." He's fidgeting, looking around like he's in a cage and trying to see if there's a way out. He tries to sit up again but I push him back down.

"Dad, stop. It's going to be fine. Just wait for the medicine to kick in. That's all you have to do."

"If that were the case I wouldn't be getting the saline, now would I?"

"You're getting that because the medicine makes you throw up, dad. That's the only reason."

"Whatever, Miles."

When my dad starts using slang he's really upset. My dad's English is not really that good, because he translates everything over that he needs to say from Kitsune before he says it, and apart from mimicking he actually doesn't understand a lot of it.

"Dad, calm down for a second. It's gonna be okay."

"No, it isn't. I don't want to be a vegetable, Miles, I'd rather be dead."

"Dad—"

"And my being a vegetable isn't good for you either. In the long run it's more beneficial if—"

"Dad, you're not being turned into a vegetable. You have to have a saline and you have to breathe assisted at night. That's it."

"…which turns into during the day as well, until I can't breathe at all!" says my dad, and he's really frustrated. He doesn't like technology and he doesn't trust it. Which is why he lives in a house in the woods and drove a 30 year old car.

"Dad, it's going to be alright. You're not going to be a vegetable. As long as you don't want to be one, you won't be. You know that."

My dad closes his eye, relaxes and breathes in as much as possible, then breathes back out again.

"You're right. I'm being stupid. I'm sorry, I just don't want to be…"

I grab his arm and squeeze it. "Hey, I know. Don't worry about it. But it's like you said, dad, if you go into this believing you've already lost, you're never going to leave."

"Right."

He coughs and his face screws up in pain for a minute.

"You okay?"

"Yes," he says slowly, "it just…it gets more painful every day. That's why I don't do it. It's getting so hard on me."

"Dad, if you don't, they have to put you to sleep and suction it out."

He grimaces.

"Fine, fine, I'll try harder."

He looks at the wall.

"I don't know how that's going to go, however. Because it gets to the point where I just can't do it anymore. I don't have the strength or the will."

"I know. Just do what you can."

All of a sudden he sags back into the pillows and his head drops, his eye barely open. He used up more energy than he can afford.

"Sleep will help, dad. Don't fight it."

"I hate sleeping during the day," my dad mumbles. "Daytime is for doing things, not loafing."

I laugh. "The rules are different when you're sick, dad."

My dad snorts and turns a little to look at me.

"Never been in the army, have you?"

"Uh…no…they wouldn't let me sign up…I think it was because I'm related to that old General Prower guy…"

My dad laughs until he starts choking and then he has a sort of coughing fit before he lays back down again.

"I wouldn't recommend it…"

"Hey, I'll let you sleep, dad. I want to go eat something anyways."

"Excellent, " says my dad. "Don't just say that because you want me to think that's what you're going to do now."

"Nah, I'm not gonna lie."

"Splendid."

I'm closing the door when my dad calls, "Miles?"

"Yeah dad?"

"Remember what I said, son. Keep your faith in Sonic."

"Sure."

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

Oh, dad. You and your outdated ideas of truth and honour.

If only Sonic thought like you.