Chapter 10: The Last Cloth

You know how sometimes you can feel time running out?

Not in a dramatic way, not the ticking clock of a deadline or the countdown to an exam or the last few seconds of a game you’re about to lose. The other kind. The quiet kind. The way the light changes in late afternoon, gold to amber to rose to gray, and you know the day is ending even though no one has told you. The way your grandmother’s voice sounds different on the phone is thinner, farther away, like she’s already halfway to somewhere you can’t follow.

I felt it the morning the hospice called.

The chime woke me from a dream. I couldn’t remember anything about water, about waves, about the sound of someone calling my name from very far away. I reached for my wrist comm, blinked at the bright display, and read the message.

Elara Voss. Admission: Pacifica Hospice. Room 412. Family requested.

That was it.

No details. No explanations. No “she’s dying” or “come quickly” or any of the words you’re supposed to use when someone you love is running out of time.

Just the facts.

The cold, clean, terrible facts.

I dressed on autopilot.

Which is absurd, because I dress none of us do, not really, not in the way you think of dressing. But I put on sandals. Grabbed a water bottle. A smeared dermal screen across my chest, arms, and thighs, not because I cared about sun protection but because my hands needed something to do.

Kai was still asleep.

Talia was in the shower.

I didn’t wake them.

This was something I had to do alone.

The hospice smelled of nothing at all.

No antiseptic sting. No floral air freshener. No lingering trace of meals carried on trays. Just the clean, neutral scent of filtered air moving slowly through wide corridors lined with open doors and soft amber light.

Bodies rested on low beds or padded lounges.

Some alone.

Some tangled gently with visitors.

Skin bare as protocol required, even here.

Death, when it came to Pacora, arrived without the barrier of cloth. It met skin directly, as life had.

I walked the corridors in a daze.

Past rooms where old people slept, their breathing shallow, their bodies soft and wrinkled and beautiful in the way that only very old bodies can be. Past rooms where families gathered, holding hands, touching cheeks, murmuring words that didn’t need to be loud. Past rooms where people died alone, because that was their choice, because even at the end, Pacora respected the right to choose.

Room 412 was at the end of the hall.

Corner room.

Wide window overlooking the Pacifica Strand.

The surf rolled in steady silver lines below; late-afternoon sun poured across the bed in warm rectangles that painted the white sheets gold and turned the faint blue veins on the arms of the woman in the bed to delicate tracery.

Grandmother.

She lay on her side, knees drawn up slightly, one hand resting on the sheet that covered only her lower legs out of habit rather than need. Her silver hair was loose around her shoulders, tangled, unbrushed. Her face was thinner than I remembered, the bones more prominent, the skin more translucent, the lines deeper.

Her breathing was slow.

Shallow.

But her eyes were still sharp, still curious, still she found me the moment I stepped inside.

“Lira,” she said.

Her voice had thinned to paper.

But the warmth remained.

The love.

The recognition.

“You came.”

I crossed the room barefoot.

My skin prickled in the cooler indoor air. The hospice kept the temperature lower than most places, for the comfort of people whose bodies could no longer regulate heat. My nipples tightened. A faint shiver traced down my spine and settled between my thighs.

I knelt beside the bed.

Our faces level.

“Always,” I said.