“Dad, what are you doing?”

Kim marched in from the kitchen, washrag in hand, and directed a pointed look at the soda can that was on its way to her father’s lips. With his feet propped up on a pillow-covered coffee table and a blanket wrapped around his middle, he didn’t pose much of a threat to her, so she took a gamble and confiscated the half-empty drink.

Jack glanced forlornly at Kim’s retreating back as she disappeared around the counter. He couldn’t see her, but he knew the sound – the now-empty can had been tossed into the recycling bin. The kitchen sink ran, cubes fell from the ice maker and seconds later, Kim was back with a tall glass of cold water in hand.

“You’re worse than your mother sometimes, you know that?” he teased as he took the glass, not able to catch himself. As soon as the words left his mouth, he knew he’d made a horrible mistake, fractured the fragile trust he’d been able to forge with his daughter in a matter of seconds.

Half-expecting a tearful response, Jack was surprised when Kim looked up from the magazine and remote she’d scooped from the floor and grinned. “You might wanna rethink that, old man. If Mom caught you with a Mountain Dew a week after you had a heart attack,” she paused for dramatic effect and shook her head, “I don’t wanna think about it. Should I even ask where you managed to get that?”

She knew there was a vending machine on the first floor of the apartment complex, but just the thought of him shuffling down there in his pajamas, as weak as he was and without her knowing, made her anxious. “Wait,” she amended, “you know what? Don’t even tell me.”

She wasn’t stupid – she knew that her father was going to do whatever he set his mind to, so it wouldn’t exactly be wise to start worrying about the uncontrollables at the moment. He’d given her his bedroom – which was nothing more than box springs and an empty chest of drawers – to sleep in, must to her chagrin, and insisted on staying on the couch in the living room. He’d used the “I’m closer to the television this way” argument on her, but she knew it was more than that – and the three-month old plastic wrap that was still on the mattresses told her all she needed to know.

The apartment was small, but neither of them had much in the way of possessions – Teri had been the packrat of the family and Kim had long-outgrown the need for a knick-knack-filled room – so it fit the two of them perfectly, forcing them together in a slightly-less-than-what-would-be comfortable space. But they needed that, needed the closeness that a four-room apartment could give them in a way that neither of them had realized. Between Jack’s injuries and her fallout over having taken a life, they nursed one another, restoring that tenuous bond to a strength it hadn’t known before.

Jack watched as Kim busied herself about the living room, smiling at the way she was now seemingly-obsessed with keeping everything neat and clean.

Oh, how things change.

He thought about how close he’d come to losing her – in more ways than one – and felt his chest tighten, but in a good way. She was there, solid and in front of him, blocking the television screen in her efforts to gather up yesterday’s newspaper. He hugged the pillow that was resting on his lap and couldn’t have been more thankful that he’d almost died.

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