One Thing At a Time

This is a fiction piece, inspired by losing my father in 2021. As he was leaving his body, he ludicrously, deliriously asked us to help him escape the hospital so he could go on his own terms. That didn't happen—but in this story, it does.

I submitted this piece to a writing contest. It was not accepted, so I’m taking control of my voice and publishing it here.

I’ve stopped treating rejection as a verdict. I’m less interested now in knocking on doors and more interested in letting the work exist as it is. This story came out of a very real moment, filtered through imagination—because sometimes, that’s the only way to survive it.

If you’ve ever felt stalled by gatekeepers, or like your voice needed approval before it could be heard, consider this a reminder: you don’t have to wait.

One thing at a time.

---

It is in the sterile white room, blinking at friends and strangers from behind N95 masks and goggles that Petunia first learns her father is “not going to make it.” The words are delivered plainly, but there’s something about not being able to see a person’s lips moving when they speak. Like, did that really just happen? The N95 masks make only one thing clear to Petunia: nothing is real. 

The “friends” in the room aren’t really friends—distant family members, brothers and sisters of her father who she’d only met a handful of times. The “strangers” aren’t exactly strangers, either. They’re the “they” who delivered the unfortunate news: the only people outside of the family Petunia’s spoken to for the past three weeks. 

Petunia watches them with a bird-like gaze, unblinking and seemingly unfeeling. But the emotions toil deep inside her core, tucked safely away from view and eating at her from within.

She feels closer to laughing than crying. Is she in a parody of her own life, or has she simply imagined the past three weeks? Has her own mind worked to embellish the truth, or have they isolated him from his loved ones? Refused to give him his vitamins (which he’s been taking daily for decades)? Fed him nothing but bottles of fucking Ensure and called it nourishment? How can a man be ethically declared “dying” with an utter, blatant, borderline fuck-you lack of trying? 

She screams at them, but no words have come out. Or they don’t hear her, or this isn’t really happening. 

She hasn’t decided yet. 

“Is this really happening?” Christophe asks. He turns to her, his eyes bulging over his mask like two wet moons. 

She looks at him, reaching out her gloved hand to touch his. She waits for someone else to answer his question, because she cannot.

“I’m so sorry,” the nurse says. The depth of the lines on her face reveal how often she has to deliver this sort of news. “I’ll give you all a moment.”

Petunia is struck by this. A moment to process a lifetime.

Between that lifetime and this moment, there was purgatory: three weeks of living inside of a screen with her hands tied behind her back. Due to the plague, the family was not allowed to be in the hospital room with Petunia’s father—not until it was determined by the medical staff that there was “nothing more they could do.” Suppose loss of hope renders a plague no longer contagious.

To combat the isolation, the family had overnighted an extra-long phone charger to the hospital so that they could FaceTime with father 24/7. They hoped to make him feel less alone, but it didn’t work. It was still just him in that hospital room, alone with a bunch of masked aliens. Petunia’s father had deteriorated exponentially, and they’d been forced to watch it happen through a screen. 

Now they were sharing this space of decay with him, no longer able to deny the truth. 

The nurses leave the room, but no one moves. Petunia’s eyes flick to her father, who is already watching her. He lays there, looking like a lump of larva. She feels like she will be sick with heartbreak. 

He tries to say something, but his voice is garbled, although he is the only one without a mask. It’s a struggle for him to speak; the effort seems to exhaust him entirely. The family whirs into motion, jerked out of their collective trance by his attempted speech.

“What is it, baby?” Christophe asks, rushing to his side. Petunia can see it in his body language: the effort it takes for him to perform as if everything is bright! Chipper! A-Okay! It’s as heartbreaking as her father’s attempt to say anything at all. They are all playacting in the hopes that something better will manifest.

This time, his words are clear—or as clear as they can be.

“I see the light.” 

Christophe breaks down at this. Sobbing into Petunia’s father’s lap, he doesn’t see him point a spindly finger at Petunia. His eyes blaze into hers, as alive as they’d been before the plague.

“Jesus is in Petunia,” he affirms. She just stares at him.

The rest of the family shifts uncomfortably in their own weight. To them, this sounds like the ramblings of a dying person crossing over to the other side. But Petunia sees a small child at the start of his journey. He is attentive, ready for whatever comes next. 

This snaps her out of the present and into what needs to be done. “Can I please have a moment alone with my father?” 

She directs the question at Christophe, but it’s implied that everyone should leave. After glancing at her father, Christophe quickly nods, rising to his feet. She catches it: the relief in his eyes. 

“Of course,” he says, motioning for the rest of the family to follow him. “We’ll just be right outside,” he tells Petunia, patting her gently on the arm.

“Actually, why don’t you all go down to the cafeteria and get yourselves some dinner? I know none of us have eaten,” she appeals to the crowd, her face folding with the right level of concern. 

Christophe nods again, the thought of food giving him a spring in his step. “Good idea. C’mon, gang,” he says, and the aunts and uncles follow him—some more reluctantly (a.k.a. homophobically) than others.

Petunia turns back to her father. She can tell he already knows what she’s thinking. 

He’d only asked them once, a week ago on FaceTime. No one else had taken him seriously, but it was all Petunia had been able to think about.

“Alright,” she says, taking a deep breath. She reaches behind her head to pull off the N95, unleashing a grin. “Let’s bust you out of here, old man.”

He lifts a weak finger, motioning for her to come closer. As soon as she does, he tosses the blanket off of himself with surprising gusto. He’s fully dressed under his hospital gown: a gray T-shirt and his favorite pair of jeans. He even put on a belt. 

“Nice,” she nods, reaching down to rip the gown in half.

“Wires,” he mouths.

“Way ahead of you,” she teases, pulling them out of his body without any curiosity. If it hurts, he doesn’t let on. The taste of freedom is way sweeter than the pain of process.

They each move as swiftly as possible, the father rising to his feet in the same period of time it takes Petunia to clear the room of all his affects. It doesn’t take long. They all fit in a single tote bag, which she slings over her shoulder. 

She looks at him, ignoring how pale and out of it he appears. He’d said it himself on that call: if he’s going to die, fine. Let it be on his own terms. That isn’t possible in the current environment, so it is now her mission to get him out of these bounds.

She presses her body against the door, peering out of the tiny window. And God is on their side: the staff is wholly occupied by a new patient being bustled in with flair and drama. Now is their chance. Reading each other’s minds in a single look, she reaches into the tote bag and flings him a hat, scarf, and fabric mask, which he applies until he’s appropriately camouflaged. 

“Wait—where’s Maxwell?” she barks just before she puts on a face mask of her own. Maxwell is her father’s stuffed pig: a gift Christophe had given him when their plans to adopt a child had fallen through a few years ago. Their honorary baby, who they always dressed to the nines in suits from Bebe Couture.

Her eyes scan the room until she spots the lump under the hospital blanket. She lifts Maxwell gingerly by the arm and stows him in the tote bag as they slip out of the door. 

Already, her father is chameleoning into something else: walking straighter and quicker, his balance is momentarily returned. His stride is almost spritely, and the pace of it does the intended trick of getting them past the staff without a second glance. 

Petunia is amazed, and wonders once again if any of this had been real. Was he faking the whole time?

But now isn’t the time to ask these sorts of questions. They just need to get the hell out of here!

Back in the floor lobby, they pause to wait for the elevator. Petunia’s father is out of breath, lightly panting with a sheen of sweat on his forehead. She reaches over to dab at him with her sleeve, trying hard not to cry. Struggling to breathe, she clutches at her own chest. But it was just something caught in her throat: the thrill of the rush, perhaps. She coughs and the elevator doors glide apart. Thankfully, no one is inside.

She ushers her father in. Together, they ride to the first floor. He moves toward the front exit; she grabs his arm and shakes her head.

“There’s a back door. No one manning it,” she says. 

He smiles at her guile. They close the space between them and the door, stepping out into the spring sunshine like they’ve already made it to heaven.

Father lets out a holler, circling his arm overhead like an excited kid. Petunia can’t help but smile.

“C’mon, let’s get away from the building,” she laughs. And then, she realizes something. “Wait—I didn’t drive here!”

Like a divine solution to her confession, an unmarked bus pulls up, steam burping out of its engine, warming them. No one is driving the vehicle. It just sits there, parked with the engine running, beckoning them forth. 

She looks at her father; he raises his eyebrows. 

They get on the bus, Petunia taking the wheel as soon as she’s settled her father into the seat behind her. “Hang tight,” she commands, locking eyes with her father in the rearview mirror. The power in her voice shocks both of them. 

“STOP!” 

Petunia’s head jerks toward the source of the sound: a gang of nurses are barrelling toward them, shaking their firsts. They look like cartoons. She decides to act like she’s in one: she slams on the gas and the bus jerks to life, shoving them out of this scene and into another, the plot of which is unknown.

Petunia doesn’t take her foot off the gas for miles: not until she’s one hundred percent certain they are not being tailed. Once this thought materializes in her mind, she laughs aloud. Who would be tailing us, anyway?

An aptly-timed incoming call jogs her memory: it’s Christophe. She reaches out and silences her phone with one quick swipe. One thing at a time.

“Petunia.”

Her eyes flick up to the rearview mirror; her father is leaned forward, his elbows propping him up against the seat. Petunia has to do a double-take: the gravity that has been dragging him down for weeks has miraculously reversed. His chest is lifted, filled with the oxygen it’s struggled so hard to cultivate. He’s living now. Almost effortlessly.

“Yes, daddy?” she asks, clearing her throat as she becomes aware of her own slouched posture. She rolls her shoulders back and cracks her neck. 

“Got any weed?” 

This shakes her up. 

He’s grinning at her, his palm extended before him. 

“C’mon, give an old guy something to live for,” he ribs.

“Not funny.” She reaches in her pocket and comes away with a flattened joint. She holds it behind her until it disappears into his hand.

“Lighter?” 

“Does someone wipe your ass for you, too?” she asks, holding out her lighter.

“Yes,” he says, grabbing it from her hand. She hears it flick to life behind her. “Guess that’s your job now, huh?”

Her eyes go cartoonishly wide. “You mean I’m not just dropping you at the nearest dump?” 

“Damn, you must have been raised by a hilarious man.”

They decide to stop a few minutes later, pulling into an abandoned parking lot near a hiking trail. The sun is setting and the wind is kicking up. Petunia reaches into the bag of her father’s items and comes away with a brown jacket: his favorite one. Petunia has few memories where he isn’t wearing it. She looks at it in her hands for a few surreal seconds, blinking back tears. 

One thing at a time. 

“Here,” she barks, coming up behind him and helping him into the jacket. Sometimes he just needs to be barked at.

She feels goosebumps on her own body, prickling against her clothing. This registers somewhere in the background of her mind, but taking care of her own needs is not a priority here.

Her phone pings again: a text from Christophe. 

Wat the hell is going on?

She gazes at the screen for a few seconds before turning the phone off. He’ll have to forgive her later. 

“Got any crack?” her father asks her. 

She just gives him a long, hard look.

“Kidding,” he says, his voice small and childlike. 

She doesn’t answer, so he tries again. “What I meant to say is, I’m hungry.”

This does the trick. He has been refusing hospital food for weeks.

“I think there are some more Ensures in your bag.”

He groans. “Ugh, if I have to drink another Ensure, I’ll…” he stops himself. “I just…I could really go for a Twinkie.” 

She looks up at him curiously. His eyes are sparkling and far away, plugged into a scene she can’t see. She watches him with wonder, trying to understand—but they are both distracted by a sudden blast of light. As mysteriously as the bus had appeared, they now stand before a massive mini-mart. 

Petunia blinks. There’s no way she missed this building in the middle of the flat terrain! But she’s so out of it, so detached from her own body, maybe she just chose not to see. 

She shrugs, turning to her father. 

He’s already made his way to the front door. He spins on his heels, reaching an arm overhead to wave at her. “C’mon, Petoons! It’s Twinkie time!”

She lets out a hearty chuckle, following his footsteps. Her legs feel heavy, and she moves with weighted effort, reaching behind to clutch her lower back. Oof.

Inside the mini-mart, they are alone, apart from the man standing behind the counter. The aisles seem to go on endlessly in every direction. Petunia takes a few steps forward, and the store only seems to extend. It’s confounding, but she struggles to give the phenomenon much attention, because her legs are really hurting now. Still, she pushes on.

One thing at a time.

“Do you still like Pop-Tarts?”

Her father is in front of her now, his arms overflowing with bagged junk food. 

“Not since the eighth grade,” she tells him, putting up a wall with her sarcasm. The truth is, his energy is unsettling her. It’s just so…

“Take Your Daughter to Eighth Grade Day!” he bellows, making a beeline for the register. “Hi, how ya doing?” she hears him say as she struggles to catch up. 

The blank-faced man rings everything up wordlessly, shoving the items into a thin, plastic bag. He doesn’t even make eye contact: it’s as if he knows they are there, but is not allowed to engage with them. 

“That will be $23.76,” he says to the air above Petunia’s head. 

Her father looks at her sheepishly. She sighs, reaching into her pocket and pulling out three iridescent coins, a little larger than a quarter. 

She holds them in front of her face, turning them over in awe. Where did these come from?

Before she can answer her own question, the blank-faced man reaches out and grabs the coins from her. 

“Have a nice day,” he tells them, dropping the coins into his register and giving them a lime green receipt. All it has on it is a smiley face with x’s for eyes. 

“Thank you—” Petunia starts, but she looks up and the man is gone. She swivels her head around in confusion, but this makes her feel so lightheaded, she almost falls over. “Woahhh.”

“What is it?” Petunia’s father asks, concern in his voice.

“Nothing,” she barks again, and this makes him smile. “Let’s go eat our artificial food.”

They make their way back to the bus, the father kicking up rocks and dirt clods and laughing himself silly. Petunia is grateful; with him occupied, she can privately suffer. She focuses on putting one foot in front of the other, her goal to simply not collapse.

They sit in the back, spreading their snacks out on the long bench between them. Petunia’s father tears packages open with his teeth, shoving Twinkies in his mouth with passion.

After a few minutes of this, he notices her watching him. He looks around him until he finds a package of Pop-Tarts. He rips one open and extends it to his daughter, an eyebrow raised in offering.

She can’t remember the last time she ate, so she takes the Pop-Tart and nibbles on it. Surprisingly, it tastes warm and freshly-baked, hugging her stomach as she swallows. But the chewing and swallowing takes a lot of effort, and she’s exhausted after just one bite.

She puts the silver package down on the seat and leans back, closing her eyes. A ludicrous thought elbows its way to the front of her mind: she is dying. 

It’s insane, she thinks. One thing at a time, and that wasn’t even on the list. The reality: she’s a hot young twenty-something accompanying her father on this pilgrimage of death—call it what it is. So why does it feel like the opposite is happening?

Her eyes fly open to find him looking at her. For a moment, she’s worried she’d spoken the words aloud: that’s how he’s looking at her. 

“I don’t think I’ve ever told you about the time your Uncle Dave and me robbed a mini-mart.”

She sighs in relief, letting her eyes close as she listens to him tell her the same story she’s heard over a hundred times. 

“...And we got off scott-free. Wild, right?! You’re old man was wiiiiild.” 

She opens her eyes and he’s standing before her now, gesticulating wildly. His upper lip is glittering with sweat. He reaches out and yanks her by the arm. She groans in pain; he doesn’t seem to notice. 

“Let’s go outside,” he urges, his voice shaking with what feels like anxiety. He’s crawling out of his skin. Meanwhile, Petunia is turning wax-like: shiny and pallid. 

He drags her off the bus and toward the horizon, his energy climaxing with every step. Her feet trudge through the dirt, moving her forward in a hazy stumble. She can hear her phone ringing, can see Christophe’s name blaring across the screen when she closes her eyes. But she doesn’t know where it is.

“Can you hear that?” she tries to ask her father, but she’s not sure the words actually comes out.

“Shh!” he says, a finger to his lips, but his mouth is shaped like laughter. “Let me tell you something. When’s the last time you rolled down a hill?”

She stares at him, a small amount of her energy returned to her. “Is that you telling me something?”

He answers by dropping and rolling, hooting as his body propels down the small dirt hill. 

She laughs, holding her arms out. She finally allows herself to fall.

Something in her body crunches, but she doesn’t care. She’s free in the way he is: connected in this dusty spiral through the terrain. Another divine download seeps into her crown as dirt flies up around her, catching on her hair and skin and clothes. She knows he’s experiencing the same thought at the exact same time: there is a finite amount of energy between them. As he revives, she is deteriorating rapidly. One must go.

Their bodies begin to roll faster, spiraling tighter and tighter until they collide in a dusty pile. There is laughter, and then there is a knowing look exchanged. In it, he sees what he’s taken. He can think of only one way to repay.

“Come here, honey,” he commands, and with those three words, he is a father again. She can’t recall the last time she was “honey.”

Entranced, she crawls toward him. He wraps her in his arms, kissing the top of her head. 

“You know something? You’ve been everything to me,” he confesses. 

She looks at him, not knowing what to say. 

“You’re my daughter. But more than that, you’re my best friend.” 

She doesn’t even dare to breathe; she’s hanging on his last word, anxious for the next. She hates what he’s saying. She needs to know how it ends.

“I’m scared,” he says, his voice much smaller. 

Somewhere in the background, she hears the phone ring softly again. 

“Christophe is worried,” she tells him, taking a deep breath. He closes his eyes, exhaling raggedly. His cough has returned. “I know,” he whispers. “But he would have never forgiven me.”

She understands what he means now: that he’s known from the start. If he’d brought Christophe instead of Petunia, it wouldn’t have worked. Christophe would have spent the rest of his life apologizing to a ghost, resenting him for sacrificing himself so he could live.

“I couldn’t do that to him,” Petunia’s father said, his eyes filling with tears. 

Petunia feels her own eyes sting with pain. “So you did it to me, instead.” Her voice is thick and bitter: a hurt child.

He flinches like he’s hit himself. “Consider it payback.” He looks at her knowingly, and she breaks down.

He pulls her head to his chest, where she unleashes her sobs. She cries out, making sounds like feel unhuman, a wounded animal in pain. It echoes through the blank space as darkness descends.

She’s spent her life mothering him. She never stopped to consider that he might have noticed.

They stay like that for hours, their tears falling into a great puddle around their bodies. The more she cries, the easier it is for her to breathe. She feels the pain begin to dissipate, a clearing forming in her headspace.

Finally, the sobs cease, and she hears only the rise and fall of her own chest. The fog has lifted, and she scrambles around herself, clawing at the ground. Where is he?

She spots him: ten feet away, gazing at the indigo sky. His silhouette is jagged, like he is struggling to stand. 

She runs to him, calling his name. He does not turn. 

She reaches out to grab his arm, but it slips through her fingers. 

He moves forward like he’s being pushed by a gust of wind; she cannot see his feet move.

She feels him leave her body like a coat sliding off.

Petunia sways, suddenly too light, as if she’s the one who’s been unhooked from the wires. The hill, the mini-mart, the bus: it all flickers around her like a screen buffering.

Her phone rings again. 

She digs for it with hands that feel newly hers. But the name on the screen isn’t Christophe.

It says: UNKNOWN CALLER.

She answers, bringing it to her ear wordlessly. 

For a moment there is only static. Then a voice filters through, muffled like it’s wearing a mask.

“Hi, honey. Can you hear me?”

Petunia gasps for air.

“I’m so sorry,” the voice continues. She recognizes it as the nurse from the hospital. “Where are you?”

She looks up.

The indigo sky has gone fluorescent. The dirt under her knees is linoleum. The air smells like sanitizer and expired fear. In the distance, somewhere just out of view, a monitor beeps in a steady, bored rhythm.

Petunia turns back to the place where her father stood, but there’s only wind. The shape of him is still pressed into her, like a dent in a pillow.

She presses her palm to her own chest. A laugh tries to rise and becomes a sob halfway up.

One thing at a time. She stands, wipes her face with the heel of her hand, and walks toward the beeping sound.