Dax Russell hit the double doors running, only to be met by a nurse and an orderly. The alarm on their faces let him know he was out of line.

He took a step back, held up his hands. “Sorry.” He was out of breath, had run all the way from the taxi. Then he saw his mom, just coming out of a hospital room through a heavy wood door that dwarfed her. Caroline Russell was Tinkerbell personified, and he adored her.

She met his eyes, gave him a sad smile and then said to the staff standing between them, “It’s okay. That’s our son.”

“Oh. Thank God.” The nurse patted his chest, and the orderly grinned and shook his head as they moved aside. Dax met his mom halfway. Her pixie short platinum hair was probably mostly silver now, but you couldn’t really tell with blond hair that light. She hugged him and he picked her up off her feet like he always did when he saw her. It was kind of their thing, him being so big, her being so small. He hugged her hard, but not too hard, then set her on her little feet again.

It often amazed him that a man of his size had somehow been produced by a little thing like his mom.

“How are you, honey?” she asked.

He lifted his head and looked toward the door she’d come out of.  “I’ll let you know.”

“No, tell me now. How are you?”

The way she said it, he knew what she was asking. And he didn’t mind. “Dry since Christmas,” he said. “Not a drop.”

“And?”

He smiled. “Life is pretty amazing when your eyeballs are clear enough to see it.”

“It is.”

It wasn’t. The only woman he’d ever loved was a criminal, and he couldn’t seem to get over her. But that wasn’t anything his mother needed to know.

She took him by the hand, led him in the wrong direction.

He tugged half-heartedly. “I should see him.”

“After we talk.” She led him through the ICU, through a set of doors and into a small waiting room with little round tables and padded chairs. A TV set mounted high on one ivory wall played the headlines to no audience. A row of vending machines, a row of windows, and a water cooler filled the remaining wall space.

Caroline went to a little table far from the television, near the windows. Dax sat down, and she did too, and then she clasped his hand in both of hers across the table. “It’s your father’s time honey,” she said. “The cardiologist is amazed he even made it to the hospital. It was a massive heart attack.”

It seemed like her words didn’t register in his brain at first. She could read him, his mom could. She loved him, had left her boorish husband mostly because of him, he’d always thought. His father was a bully, and it didn’t matter if you were a business rival or his own son. He was mean to everyone. And yet she was here. Probably because there was no one else who cared enough to be bothered.

“He’s going to die,” she said. “Do you understand, Dax?”

“He’s gonna die?”

“Yes. I’m sorry, son.”

He blinked, trying to find words. His father was a strapping, powerful man. He couldn’t just die. “When?”

“Could be any minute. Could be a couple of days. The doctor says it won’t be longer. Right now, he’s slipping in and out of consciousness. Eventually, he’ll just slip out and keep on going.”

“Wh-what about life support? Why can’t they keep him—”

“There’s too much damage to his heart, Dax.  He’d need a transplant, but there’s damage to other organs, as well, and his lifetime of drinking has riddled his liver. There’s no way back from this.”

He blinked, taking that in. It sounded cold, somehow. “Can I see him now?” he asked, staring at nothing, a spot in the space between them.

She nodded and let go of his hand. “I’ll be right here.”

He got to his feet and walked mindlessly out of the waiting room. A nurse saw him, the one who’d stopped him in the hall, and gave a smile. He had brown hair and bangs that tried to cover up the acne on his forehead, and his eyes were soft but knowing. He pointed at the door, and said, “three-oh-five” in a funeral voice.

Dax pushed the door open and went inside. At first he thought he’d walked into the wrong room. A wrinkled, saggy-faced man with gray tinted skin lay against white sheets, beneath a white blanket. The top sheet was folded over the blanket, and the old man’s arms were resting on top of it. There was an IV line in his arm, and oxygen tubes in his nostrils. There were leads strung from his chest to a monitor. The monitor and IV were mounted to a pole beside the bed. The oxygen came from a port on the wall.

His hair was mostly white, but streaks of carrot-stained yellow still showed through. That was what told Dax he wasn’t in the wrong room, those faded orange streaks. Only he used to have a lot more of them.

When did he get so old?

Dax sank into a bedside chair and remembered the last time he’d spoken to his father. He’d admitted that he’d taken money from the Aurora Downs accounts to give to a beautiful con artist for a kidney transplant she didn’t really need. He’d paid it back, thanks to a loan from a friend. But that hadn’t mattered to his father. He’d fired him on the spot, called him six kinds of idiot, and disowned him.

That had been eighteen months ago.

Mom was sure he’d been sorry after. She thought Dax ought to come home and talk it out. But he knew better. Dax had apologized three times, deeply and sincerely, in voicemails left on his father’s cell, because the old man wouldn’t take his calls. But admitting he’d been even a little bit wrong was beneath the great man. In fact, sitting there, Dax couldn’t recall ever hearing his father apologize to anyone in his whole life. Still, he wished they’d made peace, him and Dad, before it came to this.

“I thought there’d be more time.” Dax said it softly, turning away, blinking back tears. He focused on the monitor instead of the man, studied its wavy lines and numbers as if he had a clue what they meant.

“Now you show up.”

Dax turned fast, saw that the old man’s eyes were open, watery and bloodshot, the white parts tarnished. “Dad.” He moved closer, patted a big hand with his own. “I’m here.”

His father grimaced, then his eyes fell closed. “I thought so, too,” he said.

“Thought what, too?” Dax recalled his own words. “That there’d be more time?”

His father nodded.

“It doesn’t matter now, Dad. It’s all good, all is forgiven.”

Those dull eyes popped open with near violent force and his head came right off the pillow. “Forgiven?” There was no mistaking the disgust in his voice. Then he let his head fall back onto the pillows again. “Nothing is forgiven. I thought there’d be more time to change my will. Too late now, though.”

Dax stood up slow, knowing now that this wasn’t going to be the moment he’d wanted it to be. No mending of the rift, no healing moment, no tender goodbye. He was stupid to have thought it could be like that. Then he took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about what I did. I honestly thought Kendra’s life depended on it.”

“She played you.”

“It’s what she does.” He shrugged. “I thought you’d want to make peace with your only son before you died. I thought you’d want a chance to say goodbye.”

His father closed his eyes. “Try not to fuck up my legacy like you fuck up everything else.”

It stung. It shouldn’t have. He’d hardened his heart against his old man years ago. And yet it stung. “If you left it to me, you can forget it. I don’t want it.”

His father’s eyes opened a little wider. “You refuse it, it goes to the SRA.”

“I don’t care. Let the State Racing Association have it.”

“But your mother…”

“Owns forty-nine percent. I know. She can do what she wants with her half. It has nothing to do with me.” He started to turn away, but a hand gripped his wrist with surprising strength. He turned back. His father’s face wasn’t white, it was red, bordering on purple, his eyes bulging.

“She’ll go to prison.”

Dax widened his eyes. “What did you do, Dad?”

“SRA…the books…” He relaxed all at once. His eyes fell closed.

Dax swore, and bent over his father, clasped his shoulders. “What about the books? Dad! Dad!”

His father didn’t reply. His face didn’t look strained anymore. It was relaxed. Dax shot a look at the monitor. Its lines had gone flat.