Prologue

PROLOGUE

Not About Angels, Birdy

Roe, sixteen years old

“I’m going to give you two some privacy,” the nurse says before touching my shoulder and walking out of the room. It feels more like a coffin than a hospital room. She slides the door shut, and with a click she seals us in here, in this state of reality and hell.

“Daddy, please don’t leave me,” I say, my voice breaking into a silent sob. My head rests on his hand but it’s not enough. I climb up onto the bed and lay my body next to him. My arms are around his waist and my head is on his chest. With every passing minute, his breathing slows and my heart weakens. I can feel it breaking into more pieces.

Is there anything that I could’ve done to stop this from happening? To stop me being an orphan at sixteen? What was the last thing I said or did that was truly good? Truly deserving of having my parents with me? The slower beeps of the machine in the frigid room remind me: not enough. All that is left is anger and sadness. Because yes, I know I acted like a spoiled brat and maybe that didn’t win me any points in the lottery of life. It didn’t win me any siblings, or any family to rely on.

Tears slip down my face, tears that I’ve been afraid to let go because it makes it all real. Am I ever going to hear his voice again? How am I even going to talk to him now? Who’s going to understand all the fucking pain and the sorrow I’ve been drowning in for the past eight years? God, I just want him to stay. Maybe I should try to do that. I should try to pray.

“I don’t know if you’re up there, or if you even exist, but God, if you’re a thing, would you please let me keep him? Please, don’t take him away from me. I’ll pray more. I swear I’ll be good. I will do as I’m told. I will—” My voice paralyzes in utter fear when he lets out a breath and his eyes open.

Did it work? Oh my God. I ’ ll behave, I promise. I promise I will. I close my eyes tight and open them again, making sure I didn’t just imagine that and making sure that it is my dad’s beautiful blue eyes that I see staring back at me.

“Anna,” he whispers, or I think that’s what he says.

Maybe I’m imagining things but in this case he did say Anna. I reply, “No, Daddy, it’s me. Mom is not here anymore.” Adding insult to injury, he called me by my mom’s name.

Do I look like her now that I’m older? I don’t want to. Not right now. Not when these may be my last moments with him. I don’t want to be anyone else but his little girl. I don’t want to remind him of the love of his life who died first. The biggest loss of our lives. I don’t want to be sitting here when he wishes I was someone else.

“Daddy?” I ask in a broken plea. Maybe if I ask nicely, he’ll stay. Maybe if I promise to behave, something will forgive me and let me have my dad. Maybe they could take me instead?

He holds my gaze and smiles, looking the most at peace I’ve seen him in a while, and right when I think I can maybe, just maybe, wish the cancer away, he closes his eyes and takes his last breath.

It takes the last grain of hope I had left in me. Because it doesn’t matter how much I ask for him to stay, nobody does in the end.