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My Last Chance to Steal Hair From My Dying Dad
He’ll be dead soon. I needed to get his DNA now.
“Now! Do it! Pluck a piece of your dad’s hair. He won’t feel a thing.”
The voice in my head was desperate. I mustered the courage to rise out of the visitor’s chair in my dad’s ICU room, step up to him, lean in. That’s about how far I got. Then I’d chicken out. This time it was the shadow of a doctor or nurse walking by in the hallway. I had a ton of excuses. And so it went: the yelling voice inside of me clashing with the missed opportunities on the outside, repeating over and over again.
I guess I really didn’t have much time. He was hooked up to ventilators, IVs, monitors all over his body, pulsing wraps on his legs coaxing the blood to keep flowing. Who knows? All of this shit could keep him going for days. But his wife would be back any minute.
“This is your best chance yet. One strand, and you’ll know for sure.”
I get up again. You know what? This time I’m determined to yank that fucker out of his head. He has no use for it. But me? It’ll answer the question of whether or not I’m his son once and for all. I’m so close.
