Today we feature the third place winner in our 2025 Fall Flash Fiction Contest.

by Laura Nagle

“I’m strong as a bull,” the father says. “Gonna live forever.”

The son knows this is untrue.

First of all, nobody lives forever. Not even bacteria. The son has spent his career contending with the fact that some strains are damned hard to kill—almost as stubborn as his father, he’s been known to joke—but bacteria die in the end, like everything else.

Secondly, the life expectancy at birth for a male born in the United States in 1935 was sixty years. Exceeding one’s anticipated lifespan by fifty percent and demanding to stick around even longer smacks of greed. And the father, for all his faults, has never been a greedy man.

But the most compelling argument is a simple one: Dad is dying today.

“You better not have called no stinkin’ ambulance,” the father says.

The son doesn’t explain that an ambulance has indeed been called, but not by him. He has already mourned the phase of their relationship where they could have a friendly tiff about semantics. The last time they had decent banter, the last time the father told a joke: there is no stone marker bearing these dates. But those pieces of Dad are gone.

“And I don’t need to go live with you and that wife of yours, either,” the father says.

How could the father have forgotten about the son’s divorce? He’d called it the happiest day of his life.

“I know you talk about me,” the father says. “You, the wife, that sister of yours. I know everybody talks about me. I’m fine right here.”

The son’s phone was on mute when the father called to say he was feeling a little dizzy and couldn’t remember if that meant he was supposed to take an aspirin or eat a banana. So the father called the next number on his speed dial, still labeled in the mother’s cursive, the ink from her blue Bic long faded. It was the daughter’s number, and all she could do from two thousand miles away was call for an ambulance and then scream at her brother over the phone about not having moved Dad in with him sooner. But just a week or two ago he was fine on his own with a daily visit from the son after work. The decline was so slow, until it wasn’t.

“People who go into the hospital, you know what happens next,” the father says. He fusses with the belt on his bathrobe, which is knotted in three places. “They die.”

True enough, the son thinks. People die in hospitals for all sorts of reasons. And the father has read those articles the son has published about antibiotic resistance. He knows all about hospital-acquired infections, the paradox that healthcare facilities can both cure and kill. But those, in this moment, are hypothetical threats. The father’s skin is cool to the touch. His organs have begun shutting down. The son imagines the death certificate will say heart disease, but only because they don’t write old age anymore.

“I won’t go,” the father says when the paramedics are in the driveway.

In cases like the father’s, people do die in the hospital, but not right away. First, the hospital saves them. They get rehydrated in the ER and admitted to a room upstairs and tested for everything imaginable, even though it’s plain to see that the body and mind are simply ready to be done, and they are kept in limbo, with neither hope nor peace within their grasp, for an extra day or week or two until somebody finally agrees to let nature be.

“You can’t make me,” the father says.

When the mother died, three weeks after entering the nursing home, the father went looking for someone to blame and found himself. He should have kept her at home, he said, and let her die in her sleep in her own bed. He muttered to himself a lot in those days. He used to say dignity all the time. The son can’t recall the last time he heard the father use that word.

“All right,” the son says. “Just tell them you’re feeling fine. We’ll get rid of them.”

“First I gotta hit the head,” the father says.

“Do you need h—”

“I’m not an invalid, George!” The father slams the door.

George is the son’s middle name, honoring an uncle he never knew and a grandfather he barely remembers. Nobody calls him that.

The son greets the paramedics at the door and explains that this is a false alarm, that the father is fine, that his sister just panicked.

These things happen, the paramedics say. They will speak with the father. If he refuses care, he can sign a form and send them on their way.

When the father emerges from the bathroom, he is a different man: a happy one. What a joyous surprise, he exclaims, to see the son, who so rarely comes to visit! How old must the son be now? the father wonders aloud.

“Oh, Dad,” the son says. He smooths the shawl collar on the father’s bathrobe. “These people, they’re here to help you. Will you let them? Let them take a look at you?”

The father marvels at this. The son has brought friends!

Friends curious to see the father.

The father strong as a bull.

The father who will live forever.

Photo by Rachael Ren on Unsplash