Promised to a Petrov

Chapter 2

Isiah's POV:

The say that people mistake kindness for weakness, is one of the biggest truths I've ever seen. You show people a side of you closed off and suddenly, they take you for a fool. Well, I am no fool.

I stand at the other side of the glass, just watching.

The man looks frail, and timid. He hunches over which is a far cry from the military grade, perfected bearing. His muscles still there but mellowed from the past months.

I stand at the other side of the wall in hopes to push back the feeling in my chest, to hide from the emotions encircling that room as my fathers legs wobble and a nurse flanks his side with my younger brother. He held the beams but we all know he is not standing by himself, he is being held up, his feet drag and the harden looks in his face is a reminder that he himself, has no hope for the numbness to go away.

Yet he pushes himself, urging his sense to come back to him. Forcing his feet to move even if it's just inches and his foot never really leaves the ground.

It's like a scuffle, and each time his legs inch forward, his body tensed.

There is a light in the air as my youngest sister claps her hands and cheers him on, sitting at the end of the beams and smiling at him as he tries to make his way there. That is the only light, her, and my mother who rubs his back and whispers to him at every stop he pulls.

Have you ever felt that pit in your stomach, bubbles of dread and doubt. Unfamiliarity. I feel it every week when I stop in to see my father's improvements.

He's so stubborn and persistent, and I hate that when they see progress, I see imperfections. It is my dad but it isn't. I could not do my job as the elder brother and now my father pays for it. He's only in his fifties, and already met with the physical struggle of holding himself up, because I didn't pay attention. I let a women hold my gaze and take too much of my attention.

The first week he was in a coma, and they told me, it was better then him being dead. I hate myself for my thoughts but I didn't think the same. When he woke up he didn't feel like my father, my father was never disappointed in me, he never spoke to me in such a monotone way, and he never second guessed my ability to take his place.

He's confined into my childhood home though, so he is forced to trust me.

There is so much about him that has changed in the last six months. Vasily Petrov, a man with power and control, now a wheelchair user.

The girls are hardly ever out now, and they hate it.

I stay out of this room dedicated to physical rehabilitation and yet I feel everything going on in there, the emotions that swarm the room and everyone. It's a tornado that swoops in on the insides of my family, not physically wrecking the room, but them mentally. I watch as my fathers leg seemingly buckles, my brother is quick to take some of his weight as the nurse moves to hold the belt at his waist and my mother half throws herself behind him so he didn't fall back.

I should be in there, showing my support and encouraging him to keep pushing, but since the incident, he's only met my eyes twice. Once when he woke up from his two month "nap', as my sister refers to it, and the second, when he placed me in charge.

I shouldn't even be here because of the work that needs to get done, my sidetracks are the reason he's  in this positions. A pretty girl batted her lashes at me and held me close, took up my attention and now he pays.

I know Iakov's there before he even speaks, as if my body could feel him, "Konstantein is at the office" Iakov whispers as people walk throughout the hospital around us.