Part 7 – The Day He Woke Up
Ethan turned the envelope over in his hands until the edges began to soften.
It felt wrong to open something addressed to “age seventeen” when he was almost twice that now, like breaking into a time capsule that hadn’t technically been buried.
But his name was on it, and his father wasn’t in any position to hand it over properly.
At some point, waiting for the perfect moment just turned into never.
He slid his thumb under the sealed flap.
The glue gave way with a dry crackle, and the smell of old paper drifted up as he unfolded the single sheet inside.
The handwriting was steadier than in the recent letters, the lines more confident, like Frank had believed that writing this would actually change something.
At the top, in neat block letters, was a date from the spring of Ethan’s senior year.
“Ethan,” it began, no “dear” this time.
“Tomorrow you get your diploma, and I don’t know if I’ve done any of this the right way.”
Ethan’s throat tightened; he could almost see his father at the kitchen table, pen in hand, trying to find the right distance between pride and fear.
He kept reading.
“I know you think I’m trying to hold you here,” the letter went on.
“You talk about leaving this town like the building is on fire and you’re the last one out the door.
Sometimes I want to tell you I agree with you, that this place is small and stubborn and you could do more somewhere else.
But I don’t know how to say that without sounding like I’m pushing you out instead of letting you go.”
Ethan could see himself at seventeen, head full of college brochures and bus timetables, convinced that staying would be the same as failing.
He remembered late-night arguments about rent, about car insurance, about the cost of application fees.
He had heard “we can’t afford that” so many times that it had started to sound like “you’re asking for too much.”
The letter’s words cut across that memory with a slightly different rhythm.
“There is something I should have told you this week,” Frank had written.
“It scares me enough that I have not said it out loud.
I did something I am not proud of when you were younger, and I am afraid that if I tell you, you will go and never look back.”
The next line had been scratched out so thoroughly Ethan couldn’t make out a single letter.
Underneath, in smaller handwriting, was one more sentence.
“There is a letter in my mailbag right now that could change your life, and I have not put it in the box yet.”
The rest of the page was blank.
No explanation, no description of what the letter was or what he had done with it, just that hanging admission.
Ethan stared at the words until they blurred.
A memory surfaced, one he hadn’t thought about in years: a week where Frank had been jumpy and distracted, leaving the house before dawn and coming back late, eyes shadowed.
Ethan had felt sure something big was happening, that some shoe was about to drop, but no one had ever told him what it was.
He wondered, now, if the missing shoe had been in that mailbag all along.
He folded the letter carefully and slipped it back into its envelope.
The temptation to shake his father awake and demand answers pressed at the back of his teeth like a headache.
But Frank’s face, slack and pale on the pillow, made it clear that shouting would do nothing but waste air.
If there were explanations to be had, they would have to come in fits and starts, not all at once.
Ethan moved the chair closer to the bed.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “You wanted a perfect moment to tell me. You didn’t get one.
So here’s what we’re going to do instead: we’re going to use whatever pieces of time you’ve got left, even if it’s messy.”
He slid the envelope into his jacket, close to the half-finished letter from the drawer.
Hours blurred by in small routines.
He read more letters, letting his father’s written voice fill the room while machines kept time.
He refilled the cup of water on the side table even though no one was drinking it.
He stepped out only when a nurse insisted he stretch his legs, as if physical stiffness might sneak up on him the way the stroke had snuck up on Frank.
Late in the afternoon, the doctor stepped in again.
“There’s something different today,” she said, eyes on the monitor before shifting to Frank’s face.
“He’s starting to respond to stimuli more consistently. We saw his fingers twitch when we checked his reflexes, and his eyelids moved when we shined a light.”
She looked at Ethan. “If you speak to him now, he may not answer, but he might hear more than before.”
Ethan swallowed.
“What… what does answering look like?”
“Maybe a squeeze of the hand,” she said. “Maybe his eyes following your voice. Maybe one or two words. It won’t be perfect. But you’ll know if he’s trying.”
She gave a small smile. “You’ve already given him a lot to hold onto.”
When she left, Ethan pulled his chair even closer.
He reached for Frank’s hand, hesitated, then wrapped his fingers around the calloused ones lying on the blanket.
“Dad,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “If you can hear me, I’m here. Ethan’s here.”
He waited, breath held, listening past the beeps.
For a long moment, nothing happened.
Then, like a slow electric current, he felt a faint tightening against his palm.
It wasn’t strong, not the firm grip he remembered from handshakes at school ceremonies, but it was more than a reflex.
It held for a second, then slipped away as Frank’s fingers relaxed again.
“That’s you, right?” Ethan asked, heart pounding.
“You’re doing that on purpose?”
He felt another tiny squeeze, weaker, but there.
Buddy’s ears would have perked up at that, he thought, if dogs were allowed inside.
The door nudged open a few inches, and a familiar head popped around it.
“Um, we got special permission,” Maria whispered. “Just for a minute.”
Buddy nosed the door wider, tail swishing cautiously, a thin bandage now wrapped neatly around one paw where a cut had been stitched.
The nurse behind them shrugged.
“He’s been in the lobby all day,” she said. “We figured if any dog earned a one-time visit, it’s this one.”
Ethan barked out a short, surprised laugh. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, he did.”
Buddy approached the bed slowly, as if unsure whether he was allowed.
When he reached the side, he stretched his neck out and sniffed Frank’s hand, then the sheet, then the faint scent of antiseptic on the air.
He gave a soft, questioning whine and rested his chin gently on the mattress.
Frank’s fingers twitched again, this time brushing clumsily against the coarse fur.
Ethan watched his father’s eyelids.
For the first time, they fluttered—not just a random jerk, but a slow, heavy effort.
One eye cracked open a sliver, unfocused, drifting, then closed again like it was too much work to hold it.
“Hey,” Ethan said, leaning forward. “It’s okay. You’re here. We’re here.”
The nurse stepped closer, checking the lines on the monitor.
“This is good,” she murmured. “It means his brain is trying to wake the rest of him up. Keep talking. Familiar voices, familiar smells.”
She nodded at Buddy. “Whatever you’ve been doing, keep doing it.”
Ethan squeezed his father’s hand again.
“I found your letters,” he said, unable to stop himself.
“The ones in the drawer. And the one you wrote when I was seventeen. And this half one that’s driving me crazy.”
He laid the unfinished page back on the blanket where Frank could theoretically see it.
“If there’s something you wanted to tell me, you still can,” Ethan went on.
“Not in one big speech, I get that. But we’ve got paper. We’ve got time. We’ve got a very pushy dog who refuses to let people die without saying what they need to say.”
He smiled, a little crooked. “We can work with that.”
Frank’s fingers twitched toward the pen on the side table.
The motion was more of a drift than a reach, but Ethan saw it.
He pressed the call button, and when the nurse reappeared, he pointed.
“Can we… is there any way he could write?” he asked. “Even just a word or two?”
“We can try,” she said.
She placed a clipboard with a thick pad of paper over Frank’s lap and curled his weaker fingers around a marker, helping his other hand stabilize it.
“Don’t expect miracles,” she warned. “But sometimes the body remembers how to make certain shapes before the mouth remembers how to make sounds.”
Ethan watched, barely daring to breathe, as his father’s hand trembled.
The marker tip scratched across the page in one shaky, looping movement.
The shape it made was almost a circle, then a line, then something that might have been a letter.
It was ugly and broken, but undeniably deliberate.
The first attempt looked like a meaningless scribble.
The second, after the nurse adjusted his grip, looked less like a scribble and more like a crooked “S.”
The third line curved awkwardly into something Ethan recognized as a “O” or a “C.”
Buddy whined softly, watching the pen like it was alive.
After a few minutes, Frank’s hand fell back, exhausted.
The nurse removed the clipboard and handed it to Ethan.
On the page, amidst the scratches, three letters stood out, clearer than the rest: S O R.
The last stroke of what might have been a “Y” trailed off into nothing.
Ethan’s chest tightened.
“You don’t have to burn all your energy on that word,” he said, voice shaking.
“I got it from the letters already. Consider it delivered.”
Still, he smoothed the page out like it was something precious and slipped it carefully under the stack.
Visiting hours ended earlier than Ethan wanted them to.
The nurse gently reminded him that his father needed rest and that he needed food.
Maria took Buddy back to the lobby, promising to keep him occupied and away from any more hospital rules.
Ethan stood in the doorway for a long moment, looking at his father.
“I’ll be back in an hour,” he said.
“I’m leaving you with paper and a pen. If you want to write more, even just one letter at a time, I’ll read it. No more drawers.”
He set a fresh sheet on the clipboard, propped it within easy reach, and balanced the pen across it before stepping out.
Downstairs, the cafeteria smelled like coffee and overcooked vegetables.
Ethan grabbed a sandwich without tasting it and sat where he could see the lobby.
Maria was showing Buddy something on her phone, Kyle leaning over her shoulder, the three of them forming an oddly cozy picture under the harsh hospital lighting.
He wondered how any of this would look a year from now, if they would still be part of his life or just a strange, bright week in the middle of everything else.
He took one bite, then another, but his stomach protested.
He wrapped the rest of the sandwich back up and tossed it, feeling guilty and relieved at the same time.
When he checked the time, barely twenty minutes had passed.
Hospitals, he decided, existed in some alternate version of minutes that lasted longer than regular ones.
When he stepped off the elevator back on his father’s floor, the hallway felt different.
Not louder, not chaotic, just… off.
A nurse hurried past him with a frown, glancing toward his father’s room.
Ethan’s pulse jumped.
He reached the doorway in time to see the clipboard lying empty on the floor, the pen rolling slowly in a small circle as if it had just been dropped.
Frank was asleep, his hand slack, an extra line of fatigue etched between his brows.
The bed tray was askew, as though someone had nudged it hard in their haste.
And the envelope—fresh, plain, addressed in shaking letters that still somehow spelled his name—was gone.
The window was closed, and the room had only one exit.
Out in the hallway, a surprised voice called, “Hey, how did you get up here?” followed by the skittering sound of paws on linoleum.
Ethan stepped back just as Buddy streaked past the open door, a crumpled sheet of paper clenched between his teeth, tail flagging behind him like a runaway banner.
The dog glanced over his shoulder once, eyes wide and blazing with purpose, then bolted toward the stairwell, ignoring the startled shouts.
For the second time in a week, Buddy had decided that a piece of his owner’s heart needed to be delivered somewhere else—and he wasn’t waiting around for permission.
Part 8 – The Second Delivery
Chaos followed the sound of paws on linoleum.
A nurse lunged and missed, fingers brushing just behind Buddy’s tail.
A volunteer tried to block the hallway with a rolling cart, only to jump back as the dog slid under it, nails skittering on the floor.
By the time Ethan reached the corner, all he could see was the stairwell door swinging shut and the echo of frantic barking bouncing off the walls.
“Buddy!” Ethan shouted, shoving the door open.
Cold air rushed up from below, carrying the smell of disinfectant and wet concrete.
He caught a flash of white and tan fur spiraling down the stairs, the crumpled page clenched in the dog’s teeth like a lifeline.
Maria skidded in behind him, almost colliding with his back.
“He’s going for the exit,” she panted.
“I’ll take the elevator and try to cut him off.”
Kyle appeared a second later, cheeks flushed, hospital visitor badge askew.
“I’ll go with her,” he said. “You stay on him. He seems more interested in you than rules.”
Ethan took the steps two at a time, hand skimming the rail as he vaulted down flight after flight.
His lungs burned, but fear pushed his legs faster.
He wasn’t just chasing a runaway dog; he was chasing whatever his father had managed to get onto that page before his hand gave out.
The idea of that letter blowing away in a parking lot made his stomach knot.
Buddy hit the ground floor and shouldered through the heavy door with a grunt.
By the time Ethan burst out after him, the dog was already halfway across the lot, darting between parked cars, the paper flapping from his jaws.
A hospital security guard shouted, “Hey!” but Buddy swerved out of reach, paws splashing through a shallow puddle.
He didn’t look back once.
“Buddy, stop!” Ethan yelled, useless and raw.
For a brief second, the dog slowed at the sound of his voice, ears flicking backward.
Then he lifted his head, sniffed the air, and turned toward the road that led away from the hospital and down into town.
Ethan recognized the direction instantly—Frank’s old route.
By the time Ethan reached the sidewalk, his chest heaving, Buddy was a streak at the edge of his vision.
A car horn blared as the dog dashed across a side street, narrowly missing a bumper.
The driver rolled down his window to shout, then blinked in recognition.
“Is that the mailman’s dog again?” he muttered, phone already coming up to get a video.
Ethan ran until his legs wobbled, then slowed, sucking in cold air.
He’d never catch Buddy on foot like this, not if the dog had a head start and a clear mission.
His phone buzzed in his pocket; when he fumbled it out, a notification from a local group chat popped up.
“HE’S OUT AGAIN,” someone had posted under a shaky video of Buddy sprinting past the hospital sign, paper clenched in his mouth. “MAIL DOG 2.0.”
Kyle’s name flashed across the top of the screen.
Ethan answered without slowing down.
“We’re tracking him,” Kyle said, not bothering with hello. “People are posting sightings in the community group. He just ran past the bus stop on Maple, heading toward the old grocery.”
Ethan glanced ahead; he knew that route. “That’s Dad’s mid-morning break spot,” he said under his breath.
The bus stop bench still leaned slightly to one side from when a snowplow had clipped it years ago.
An older man in a worn jacket sat there now, hands cupped around a paper coffee cup.
By the time Ethan got close, Buddy was already there, hopping up with his front paws on the bench, panting hard.
The man started, nearly spilling his drink.
“Hey there, boy,” he said, voice softening when he recognized the dog. “You out on deliveries without your human today?”
Buddy dropped the crumpled page in the man’s lap for one brief second, tail whipping.
The man’s eyes widened at the sight of the shaky handwriting and the smear of ink.
“To my son…” he read aloud, before Buddy snatched the page back with a low, anxious sound.
He looked up as Ethan jogged the last few steps.
“You must be his kid,” the man said, taking in the panic and the resemblance in one long glance. “He talked about you. Said you were smart, went off to do something with computers he didn’t understand.”
Ethan bent, hand on his knees, catching his breath.
“Did you see where he’s going?” he asked.
The man nodded toward the next block, where the street curved downhill.
“Same way your dad always went after he stretched his legs,” he said. “Past the grocery, toward the little houses by the creek. He never changed his pattern. Guess the dog hasn’t either.”
Buddy barked once, as if impatient with their talking, and took off again.
This time, Ethan didn’t chase directly.
He hit call on Kyle’s number as he walked, breathing hard into the phone.
“Tell people in the group to keep posting videos,” he said. “He’s following Dad’s route. We’ll have to get ahead of him, not just behind.”
By the time he reached the corner near the grocery store, a small knot of people had gathered.
A teenage cashier stood in the doorway, apron still on, pointing toward the side alley.
“He ran through here,” she said to anyone who would listen. “Dropped this for a second.”
She held up a photo on her phone—a blurry shot of Buddy scrambling past the stack of shopping carts, the crumpled paper on the concrete beside him.
A little boy at her side tugged on his mother’s sleeve.
“Mom, that’s the dog that brought you that envelope when Grandpa died,” he said.
His mother’s face softened and crumpled at the same time.
“He brought the sympathy card from the church,” she told Ethan when she noticed him listening. “Your father had written a note on the back. I still have it.”
It seemed everywhere Buddy went, he ran through someone’s memory.
At the corner by the small white house with the crooked fence, an older woman stood on her porch, hand pressed to her chest.
“He dropped it right there,” she said, pointing to a wet patch on the sidewalk where the dog had paused. “I saw your father’s name at the bottom when the wind flipped it up. Then he took off again before I could shout.”
“What did it say?” Ethan asked sharply.
She hesitated. “I don’t read other people’s mail,” she said. “But I could tell it was for you. I recognized your name from the stories he told.”
Her gaze drifted toward the dog-shaped blur disappearing down the hill. “He saved my pension once, you know. Made sure my check didn’t go missing when they changed all the addresses. Nobody else noticed there was a problem.”
The town was waking up to the chase in real time.
Phones came out, cameras followed Buddy’s streak of motion, captions popped up with variations of “He’s at the creek!” and “He just ran past the old ball field!”
Kyle fed updates to Ethan between shallow breaths as he jogged from one landmark to the next, sometimes catching sight of Buddy, more often just missing him.
Maria stayed with Mrs. Henson, posting their own reminders: “If you see him, don’t try to grab the paper. Just tell us where.”
By midday, the sky had clouded over, throwing a diffuse gray light across the town.
Ethan found himself standing near the edge of the small bridge that crossed the creek just outside the neighborhood where he’d grown up.
He hadn’t been here in years, but the railing still had the faint groove where his bike handle had scraped it the day he misjudged a turn and his father’s hand had shot out to steady him.
A soft whine pulled his attention to the far end of the bridge.
Buddy stood there, paws wet and muddy, the paper once again on the ground in front of him.
He hovered over it like a mother bird, not quite touching, not quite walking away.
When he saw Ethan, his tail gave one slow wag, then another.
Ethan approached slowly, as if spooking the dog might spook the moment.
The wind off the creek lifted his hair, carrying the smell of damp earth and old leaves.
He could hear cars on the main road in the distance, the faint murmur of voices from a nearby walking path.
Here, on the concrete span, it felt like the town and his childhood overlapped for a second.
“It’s okay,” he murmured, crouching a few feet away.
“I get it. You delivered it as far as you could. Now it’s my turn.”
Buddy looked between him and the letter, then nudged the page forward with his nose until it slid closer to Ethan’s shoes.
The paper was more crumpled now, the edges damp from puddles and dog saliva.
Some of the ink had blurred into soft gray smudges, but the first lines near the top were still legible.
Ethan picked it up carefully, smoothing it against his thigh as his heart hammered in his chest.
A few people had drifted closer, drawn by the sight of the dog and his familiar, frantic path.
Maria reached the bridge a minute later, breathless, phone in hand.
Kyle followed, hands on his knees, shaking his head with a half-laugh, half-groan.
“I swear, your dad’s dog has better cardio than all of us,” he wheezed.
Maria glanced at the page in Ethan’s hand, then back at his face.
“You don’t have to read it out loud,” she said gently.
But some part of this didn’t feel like it was just for him anymore.
The town had watched his father carry everyone else’s news for forty years; now it had watched his dog carry Frank’s own story through their streets.
It felt wrong to pretend this was happening in a vacuum.
Ethan looked down at the first line and felt the blood drain from his face.
“‘Ethan,’” he read, voice barely more than a whisper.
“‘There is something I never delivered to you, and it changed the road you took out of this town.’”
The next line made his fingers tremble so hard he almost dropped the page.
“‘When you were seventeen, there was a letter in my mailbag with your name on it,’” he continued, the words tasting like metal.
“‘It held an answer you were waiting for, and I kept it for a day that never came.’”
Beside him, Maria sucked in a sharp breath, eyes wide.
Kyle’s jaw tightened, a flicker of something like anger crossing his face on Ethan’s behalf.
Before he could read further, Ethan’s phone vibrated violently in his pocket.
The caller ID flashed the hospital’s number, stark against the cracked screen.
He stared at it, torn between the half-revealed confession in his hand and the person who had written it lying in a bed across town.
Buddy whined softly, as if urging him to move.
Ethan answered on the second ring.
“Mr. Carter?” the nurse’s voice came, urgent but controlled. “Your father is awake and trying to speak. He keeps repeating one word: ‘letter.’
If you have something from him, he’s asking for it.
If you want him to finish what he started, you need to bring it now.”