The Last Pet

The goldfish floated sideways in its bowl, its orange scales catching the dying afternoon light through the hospital window. Sarah watched its gills move—barely, just barely—and thought about how her father had kept this fish alive for seven years through two marriages and one bankruptcy.

'You're really going to take it?' David stood in the doorway, his palm pressed against the frame. His iPhone buzzed in his pocket, vibrating against the silence between them. The fifth time in twenty minutes.

'The nurse said it's the only thing he talks about.' Sarah didn't turn around. 'Besides you.'

David laughed, short and bitter. 'Right. Because I'm such a devoted son.' He stepped into the room, the sterile air swallowing him whole. 'Mom left him, you know. Last week. Moved in with that tennis instructor from the club.'

The fish rolled slightly in the water. Sarah's throat tightened. She'd been at the bedside when her father had whispered it between morphine dreams: *She's gone, Sarah. Like the fox in the garden that one summer.*

That fox—she remembered it too. How they'd watched from the kitchen window, her father lifting her onto the counter, both of them holding their breath as it slipped through the hedge, something dead in its jaws. *Some things just take what they need, kiddo. Then they move on.*

'You should answer it,' Sarah said. 'Your phone.'

David pulled it from his pocket, stared at the screen, then slid it back. 'It's work. They can wait.' He crossed to the bedside, reached for the fishbowl with both hands. 'I'll take it to my place. He'll want to see it when he—'

'When he what?' When he dies? The word hung between them, unspoken.

'When he wakes up.' David's voice cracked. Just once.

The goldfish's gills stopped moving. Neither of them noticed until David lifted the bowl and the fish didn't roll with the movement. It just drifted, suspended in its own tiny ocean, finally at rest.

Sarah pressed her palm against the cold glass. 'Well,' she said. 'At least one of us got to say goodbye.'