Ion let out a wet, gravelly laugh that turned into a cough. "My heart stopped forty years ago when your mother left. This? This is just the engine finally running out of fuel."
"Don't be like me," he whispered, a single tear escaping the corner of his eye, smelling faintly of rye. "Don't wait until the end to realize that the world is beautiful enough without the haze."
He wasn't just dying; he was profoundly, stubbornly drunk. It was his final act of rebellion against a world that had tried to sober him up for decades. In his clouded mind, the hospital room had transformed. The white sheets were the snowdrifts of his youth in the village; the IV drip was the rhythmic ticking of the clock in his grandfather’s kitchen. sunt_betiv_pe_pat_de_moarte
The room smelled of stale antiseptic and cheap plum brandy—the kind that burns the throat and numbs the soul. Ion lay back, his breath a ragged whistle, staring at the peeling wallpaper as if it were a map of his own misspent life.
"I drank so I could be the hero I wasn't," he murmured. "In the glass, I was a king. On the bed... I'm just a man who forgot how to live without a shadow." Ion let out a wet, gravelly laugh that turned into a cough
Ion closed his eyes. He saw the golden fields of the Bărăgan, the sweat on his brow, and the crushing weight of a life that never quite fit the man he wanted to be. The alcohol hadn't been a choice; it had been a shroud, keeping the cold reality of his failures at bay.
His daughter, Elena, didn't move. Her eyes were red, not from the fumes, but from three nights of watching her father slip away. "The doctor said it would stop your heart, Tata." This is just the engine finally running out of fuel
Elena leaned in, catching the scent of the spirits on his breath. "Why, Tata?"