Quid Pro Quo

He stands over the bed with the pillow in his hands. His knuckles are white with tension, the fabric compressed under the pressure. It would be simple. No mess, no blood, no questions. A palliative patient who simply stops breathing in his sleep. It happens every day.

But simple is not the same as right. Simple was too easy, too fast.

Jonas lowers the pillow and carefully puts it back in place.

The man in the bed has been reduced to a skeleton draped in parchment skin. The same man who used to be able to suck the air out of a room with a single look.

The smell in the room is a mixture of disinfectant, stale urine, and something sweet that should not be sweet. Approaching decay has a signature of its own. He has grown used to it, or he has convinced himself that he has.

He remains standing beside the bed without doing anything. His shoulders raised, his back slightly hunched. A physical echo of thirty years of accepting, absorbing, avoiding.

He rubs the thin white scars on his forearms. Old memories that do not disappear, only fade.

He feels no blind hatred. For that, he is too emotionally exhausted. Not brute revenge, but a subtle correction of reality. A cold need for a very specific kind of balance.

He wanted his father to feel what he’d done to him. Fully.

He thinks about everything that needs to be done. Washing. Emptying. Changing. Turning. Checking. Recording. Caring for a body he knows better than he wants to.

Him, of all people. As always, it fell to him.

His stomach turns at the thought.

The next morning he smells it already in the hallway. The door does not even have to open; the stench pushes through the cracks.

“Well, old man,” he says as he walks in. “I didn’t change you last night. Forgot.”

His father lies half out of bed, helpless, one arm limp at his side. The sheets are soaked.

“Trying to get away?” Jonas mutters as he pulls on gloves. “Not much chance.”

He works methodically. No hurry, no anger. He washes, changes, turns the body with practiced movements. His face remains expressionless, but his breathing is shallow; he holds it whenever he can.

His father follows him with his eyes. The light in them is almost gone, but not quite. There is still something there Jonas recognizes, something that does not die with the body.

The man points to his lips, dry and cracked, and then to the tap.

Jonas looks at him. Pretends he does not understand.

“Lip balm? Don’t have any.”

The man shakes his head, more desperately now, and points again.

Jonas fills a glass with water and places it on the bedside table. Just out of reach. Exactly far enough. For a second, he almost moves the glass closer.

He stays where he is and watches the arm stretch toward it, tremble, try again. The fingers almost touch the glass, miss it, slide over the surface without grip. The body shifts with it, too far, too fast.

The glass falls.

Breaks.

Water, shards, silence.

Something moves through Jonas that he cannot immediately name. No satisfaction. No regret. Something in between.

He returns with a plastic cup and a straw. Hands it to him without saying a word. His face feels warm.

A correction, he tells himself.

Nothing more than that.

But the corrections keep coming.

More subtle.

More frequent.

When he sees the diaper is saturated, he first looks at the clock. He knows exactly what time it is. He also knows he can leave it. That nothing will happen if he waits.

He thinks of nights when he himself lay still. Did not dare move. Did not dare breathe.

He waits.

Not long.

Long enough.

The morphine pump ticks softly beside the bed. A reassuring sound, according to the doctor. Pain relief, comfort, dignity.

Jonas knows the settings. He knows what he is doing when he lowers the dosage. Not off. Not drastic. Just enough to keep someone conscious.

Present.

He wants his father to be present.

The doctor comes once a week. On that day everything is different. The room is clean, the bed tight, the body cared for. Sometimes there are flowers. Sometimes soft music. Jonas moves through the space like a model son.

“It’s moving fast now,” the doctor says. “Days, not weeks. We can increase the morphine.”

Jonas nods. Thoughtful. Involved.

His father tries to say something as soon as the doctor leaves.

“Mo… mor…”

The man tries to sit up, straining in a body that no longer allows it. The sounds get stuck, fray, fall apart before they form meaning.

Jonas remains where he is.

“I don’t understand you,” he says, without coming closer.

“Mo… mor…”

The fingers move toward the IV, trembling, pointing, repeating the gesture that needs no explanation.

Jonas follows it with his eyes. He understands immediately. Of course he understands.

“Yes,” he says eventually. “I’ll be here tomorrow. That’s what you mean, right? Tomorrow.”

He lingers a moment longer, hoping something else will come. Another word. Another gesture. Something not about pain, but about recognition. Of guilt. Of remorse.

Nothing comes.

When he later adjusts the pump, he does so without hesitation. Not drastic, not obvious—just enough to keep the body from slipping into oblivion. His father had to feel that physical pain.

“Quid pro quo,” he mutters before closing the door behind him.

The days blur together, become one long sequence of actions without variation. His father suffers visibly, but keeps following Jonas with his eyes. Always those eyes, searching for something Jonas refuses to give.

Sometimes his name surfaces, half-formed. Even that takes too much effort.

“J… Jo…”

One afternoon, when the light falls flat and colorless into the room—that moment—Jonas gives in to something he does not fully understand. He takes a step forward. Another. Leans in slightly.

Too close.

The movement is so fast he does not even register it at first. Only when the fingers close around his wrist—hard, unexpectedly firm—does he realize what is happening.

The grip is not that of a dying man.

It is the old grip.

His body reacts faster than his thoughts. In a flash, the memories return.

Wrong. Hard. Too much. Blue. Belt. Broken. The endless repetition.

Everything tightens, his breath catches, and for a moment—just a fraction—there is no difference between then and now.

The room disappears. The bed disappears. Only that hand remains.

He tears himself free with a force he does not recognize and stumbles back, his heartbeat loud and uneven in his ears. The imprint of the fingers burns on his skin.

When he looks up, the strength is gone.

What remains is the body. For a moment, Jonas thinks he sees a crooked, self-satisfied smirk on his father’s face even now.

That is the moment Jonas understands nothing else is coming.

No words that will hold. No recognition that won’t be taken back. No ending that resolves itself.

He turns away, walks to the chair where his coat lies, and takes out the recorder. He has been carrying it for days. Maybe longer.

He looks at his hand, as if it does not belong to him.

Without hurry, he places the device on the bedside table, where the sound cannot be avoided.

He presses play.

His own voice fills the room.

Not loud. Not shouting. But inescapable.

Sentences that begin and do not stop. Memories that are not softened. Details that were never meant to exist out loud.

His father tries to push the device away, but his arm drops halfway back. There is no strength left to change anything.

Only to listen.

There is no escape. The voice continues, uninterrupted, as if detached from the one who once recorded it.

Jonas stands by the door.

He looks.

He waits.

The crying starts slowly, almost inaudible. No flowing tears, just a sound forced outward from somewhere deep inside.

“Forgive me… Jonas…”

The words land heavily in the room.

But they do not stay.

“My father… his father… it’s in us… the blood… the DNA… I couldn’t help it…”

Jonas closes his eyes for a moment.

There it is.

Not recognition.

Escape.

Even now.

He places his hand on the handle and feels the cold metal under his fingers.

“It stops here,” he says.

Softly. Without emphasis. As if he is saying it mostly to himself.

He opens the door.

The voice of the recorder continues behind him, unchanged, uninterrupted.

This was the final correction. Mental exhaustion.

He does not look back.

The door closes.

He steps into the cold air outside, with feelings colder than the freezing air.

The satisfaction of his small corrections does not come.

His corrections had been quieter, more controlled. But did that make him a better man?