Pull the Plug

KADEN

My dad’s hand was ice cold in mine. His chest rose and fell in simulated breaths, his skin a sickly gray under the lights in his room. Machines hummed and beeped, but I was barely aware of the sounds.

For twenty-seven years, the man lying on the bed in front of me had been my tormentor. Apart from brief moments in time, a day here and week or two there, he had been brutal.

He pushed me every second of every day, and he never took “no” or “I’m tired” as an answer. If I got eighty percent on a test, he’d asked where the other twenty went. If I came in second place in debate, he told me to bother with preparation next time. It was the same with everything else.

No matter what I did or how well I did, I just never did quite well enough. I never quite satisfied his expectations. He just kept pushing and pushing, and eventually, I started pushing back.

It’d been that way for years now. Since way before I went to Harvard or came to New York to work for him. In many ways, it felt like