I stayed frozen near the foot of the bed, my fingers digging into the strap of my bag until they went numb. It was jarring—seeing the man who had loomed like a god over my life, a man who had dictated my every breath, now reduced to this broken, bandaged heap. For a split second, the old, poisoned conditioning kicked in. I felt a flicker of pity, a biological reflex to reach out and help a person who looked so vulnerable. I saw the way the IV tube snaked into his bruised arm and the way his chest struggled for every intake of air.
"Are you... are you going to come give me a hug?" he asked, his voice cracking, sounding like a lost child.
That snapped me out of it. The pity vanished as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by the visceral memory of the cold mountain air and the icy steel of
