Then and Always by Dani Atkins

you’re awake in time for breakfast,” my dad announced in an overly cheery tone. I was slow in turning my head toward him, hopeful that the strange episode of the previous day had just been imagined. He must have seen the look in my eyes as I once more took in his obvious good health, for his smile faltered a little. I felt a stab of absolute mortification. Had I actually been hoping to see my only parent still in the throes of his battle with a terrible disease? What sort of a person did that make me?
    I tried to smile back.
    “G’morning,” I mumbled. My mouth felt as though someone had stuffed it with cotton wool in the night.
    “How are you this morning? Are you ready for something to eat?”
    I shook my head, the thought of food making my stomach roll in horror.
    “Tea,” I croaked, my throat as parched as my tongue. I tried again with more effort. “Just some tea, please, Dad.”
    His eyes never left me as I raised the utilitarian white cup to my lips and didn’t lower it until it was emptied. He seemed pleased to see me performing such a mundane function without incident or outburst. Was that a measure of my sanity? Didn’t crazy people drink tea?
    “Shall I see if the nurses can get you another one?”
    I nodded, and was grateful when he left to pursue a second cup, as it gave me a minute or two to collect my thoughts. He was gone nowhere near long enough for me to even begin to have sorted out my bewilderment. I drained the second cup and felt, physically at least, a little revived.
    “So how is your head this morning, sweetheart?”
    “Better, I think. Dad, what’s going on here?”
    He looked uncomfortable, before bouncing the question back to me:
    “Going on here? What do you mean?”
    “Stop it, Dad. I mean it. What’s happened to you, and why haven’t you told me about it? Have they got you on some miracle drug or something? Are you in remission?”
    The look on his face was tortured; he was clearly searching, and failing, to find the right answer to give me.
    “Rachel love, I think you are still a little confused—”
    I interrupted him, struggling to sit up more fully in bed and wincing in pain from what felt like a thousand bruises. I tried to speak slowly, articulating each word in a reasonable tone; the last thing I wanted was someone calling for me to be sedated again.
    “Dad, I am not confused—well, I am, but not in the way you mean. Three weeks ago you looked … well, you looked absolutely terrible. The chemo had made you so sick and weak, and the weight you’d lost … well, just everything. And now … now it makes no sense, you look completely better.”
    His dearly loved face looked troubled as he studied me, and his eyes began to well with tears.
    “Rachel, I
am
completely well.”
    “How can you have been cured so quickly?” This was all just too much to absorb. My father began to reach for the bell push above my bed.
    “Perhaps we should ask if the doctor could come and see you again now.”
    “No!” I shouted, my voice thick with the frustration I knew was on my face. Shaking his head sadly, my father lowered his arm from the emergency button and let his roughenedfingers reach for and encompass my hand, patting it soothingly.
    “I haven’t ‘been cured,’ Rachel, because I’ve never been ill in the first place. I
don’t
have cancer and I can’t imagine why you thought I did.”
    THE NURSES CAME in then, one to remove the breakfast tray and another to help me to the bathroom. In truth I was glad to be taken away. For some reason my father was hiding from me what had happened to him. My sluggish mind, still addled from the sedative, couldn’t think of a single reason why he was keeping such a thing secret.
    I was grateful for the nurse’s assistance in the sparse white-tiled bathroom. Thankfully, my IV had been removed sometime during the night, and although unencumbered by having to wheel a tripod around, I still couldn’t have managed either the short