The Last Witness

The house is silent. A strange silence, thick with breaths that aren’t hers.

In the room stands a hospital bed that was never meant to cross this threshold. It has metal rails and a white sheet that no longer manages to hide the wear and tear of the days. Ana sits beside it in the old living room armchair, dragged into the bedroom weeks ago. It was comfortable at first. She brought it in that first night “just in case.” It never went back.

The patient sleeps. Or something like it. He breathes with a slight rattle, as if every inhalation has to negotiate for permission. Ana knows the sound by heart.

Five years ago, when her mother died, this same man still moved slowly through the house. He made coffee in the morning. He watched the news in silence. Then, he began to dim. First the heart. Then the diabetes. Now the kidneys. The illness arrived gradually, like a guest who never leaves.

She checks the clock. 03:17.

It has been weeks since she slept more than two hours at a stretch. When she closes her eyes, her ears remain open. It’s as if a part of her stays on guard duty. During the day, a caregiver comes, paid for by her father’s pension. It allows her to go to work, to maintain a life that, from the outside, looks normal.

Ana is thirty-five. She has a university degree hanging on the study wall and a life she once imagined differently. She separated long ago. No children. No siblings. The house is inhabited by two sets of breathing and too many memories.

She stands up slowly. Adjusts the blanket. Touches his forehead. It’s warm, but not burning. That’s good. These days, you learn to celebrate the small things. She returns to the chair. Her back aches. Her shoulders look as if someone has hung invisible sacks from either side.

On the nightstand: medicine, a syringe, a glass of water, and a notebook where she logs times and doses in handwriting that grows increasingly jagged. The notebook looks like a castaway’s journal.

At the head of the bed, two photos. One shows her parents, younger, leaning against each other on a windy beach. He has his arm around her shoulders. Both look at the camera with that quiet certainty people had back when the world was still simple. Beside it sits the other: an enlargement of Ana at twelve. Pigtails. A massive smile. Braces she hated with all her soul back then.

The man stirs. Ana is up instantly.

“Shhh… easy now…”

She doesn’t know if he hears her. She adjusts his pillow. The body of the sick weighs more than a body should. The effort wrenches a flicker of resentment from her. Just for a second. A gesture no one sees.

The man opens his eyes. He looks toward the headboard. His gaze drifts from the beach photo to the girl with pigtails. Then, he stops on Ana. He watches her for a few seconds, as if trying to fit an image into place inside his head.

Then, he murmurs: “China…”

The word lingers in the room. Ana doesn’t correct him. She doesn’t explain. She only tucks the blanket in with care. It has been five years since anyone called her by that nickname in this house.

When she returns to the chair, the fatigue rises from her legs to her chest. A thick exhaustion. The kind that crushes. She runs her hands over her face. She looks at the man in the bed. He is her father. The last witness to her life.

In that face are the childhood vacations. The adolescent arguments. The time he took her to school on his bicycle when she was little. The love is still there. That hasn’t changed. But the weariness is brutal. And weariness, when it stays too long, begins to push thoughts you don’t want to have.

The first time it appeared was months ago, at night. Like now. A short, sharp thought. Let this end.

The moment it surfaced, she chased it away. She felt like trash. A traitor. But the thought came back. Not always. Occasionally. When the body can’t give anymore. When the house feels too big. When the night becomes endless.

Ana looks at him again. He breathes slowly. She leans in slightly and smooths the blanket. She brushes her hand over his head with an old tenderness. And in a voice so low that only the night can hear, she says:

“Stay a little longer…”

She pauses. The silence is heavy.

“…but not too long.”

Ana sits back down in the armchair. 03:29. The breathing continues. And so does she…

…"

–“Continue reading and experience the original text in Spanish at https://fictograma.com/. Join our open-source community of writers today!”–