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His breath was heavy as he re-entered the room. He pulled the chair away from the small table which separated us, and I heard the definite scrape of metal on concrete as the interviewer somewhat fell onto the chair. The sound of him straightening his posture followed, before he greeted me in an unimpressively standard fashion:

"Err, good morning..." He paused to search for my name. I decided to beat him to the punch.

"Cody." A curt response was decidedly sufficient.

"Mister James, thank-"

"Cody."

"Right. Sorry. Cody, thanks for coming down." His tone was shaky, but sincere. I relaxed a little in the knowledge that the interviewer was at least partially genuine, but the tiger still retained a solid exterior.

"Is something wrong, mister..."

"Macmillan- uh, Sam, just Sam. And nothing's wrong, no. Shall we begin?"

I nodded. Sam followed with a series of surprisingly non-invasive questions regarding my personal history before some scientific description of the specificities of my condition which, contrary to my affirmative verbal motions, I barely kept up with. Essentially he proposed an exploration into the treatment that would be required to repair the optic nerve damage, and restore sight to my eye.

"It'll take the better part of six months to examine, to test, to... attempt a repair." He explained.

"And what if it works?"

"Then you'll have a functioning eye. Probably not nearly as sharp as your other senses, but functional."

"Are there risks?"

"There are always risks. Because we're working inside your head, obviously there are all kinds of risks of infection and things going wrong, but they're-"

"Okay. I'll do it." I interrupted. My days were filled with empty waiting for relief from boredom. I was beginning to think that relief would only come in the form of death, but this might give me an opportunity to do something to benefit someone, somewhere at some time... hopefully.

"Are you sure?" Sam was astonished.

"Yup, why wouldn't I be?" I confirmed.

"I, uh... just needed to confirm." He continued through a ream of paper, reading occasional warnings and suggestions and notifications that I scarcely acknowledged, periodically stopping to ensure that my attention was focused on him. It was, certainly, just not in any way he would expect. There was a familiarity about that room. Not in the way it sounded, or the way it smelt. It felt similar to those first few minutes of the morning, the ones that resonated with paranoia and that unshakeable feeling of being watched. But I realised in that room something that I never had before: the feeling wasn't an unpleasant one.

***

I led Cody out of the room, trusting his insistence that he could show himself out. I watched as he walked down the hall, not a falter in his step, not wielding a cane or companion to show him the way, instead periodically clicking his tongue to gauge distance from objects.

"Perhaps," I thought, "my observations have more weight than I give them credit for."

A buzz from my pocket, and I removed the blinking pager from my breast pocket. Across it, a simple message from my usually apathetic parents: "Go see your grandfather." I shuddered. The thought sickened me, made me want to run away, discarding all pressures and expectations and rejecting communication with any of the other members of my species, or any other species for that matter.

And yet, I swallowed that desire and proceeded with the day's remaining interviews. Nothing interesting was to be had.

I later found myself wandering through the nursing home which begrudgingly held my grandfather, greeting the familiar nurses, as well as those unknown to me. I got as far as the door to the balcony where I'd been told my grandfather was sitting idly before I stopped, my hand resting on the doorknob, ready to turn, but my mind unwilling. In that brief moment, I closed my eyes and rested my head on the door, preparing myself mentally for the coming confrontation. A deep breath in... and out.

I was ready.

Turning the handle and pulling the door open, I was greeted by a rush of rose-coloured light, a colour resounding with the depth and sophistication of a fine wine. I remained poised and calm as I stepped out onto the balcony, focusing on the ridges of the wood beneath my feet as they coldly betrayed the warmth of the summer afternoon. I looked up over the balcony; over houses, fields and fences, over forests and lakes, over deserts and tundras and cities and jungles and canyons and mountains, and straight up into the sky. The sun was setting.

I could procrastinate no longer. I turned to the ghost behind me and dropped to a knee, levelling our eyes as a sign of forced respect. I looked into his eyes for a moment, but couldn't hold a gaze, forcing my view to snap down to a dying pot of lilies.

The delicate flowers, like the aged tiger at whose foot they sat, were busily fading into non-existence. Wilted and dying, many of the stems had limply fallen into the moist soil, with those remaining dying fast.

"Why won't you look at me?"

The voice was hoarse, ground down from a lifetime of chain smoking. For that, I felt little sympathy.

But what was it stopping me from looking at my only remaining father figure? Sure, his face was now so grotesquely deformed that the individual (or even species) was far beyond recognition. But I was a medical researcher, accustomed to such cosmetic issues. No, it was our not-so-uniquely unpleasant history that steered me from looking into his eyes with anything beyond contempt. I could hardly voice that to a dying man, though. Anyone could tell that death wasn't far away - his tail had even ceased to flick back and forth as mine did even in my most miserable hour.

"It's the cancer, isn't it? I know it's hard, but Samuel, I'm your grandfather, for Christ's sake. I'm dying. Just look into my eyes."

I kept my eyes on the dying lilies, bathing in the pink evening light, dying as surely as my father's father. I spoke softly, almost afraid: "It's not that."

His tone changed from pleading to angry in an instant: "Look at me when you speak to me, boy." He growled. That tone, the demanding antagonism that permeated every syllable, broke something in me, added the extra pressure to break the dam keeping all me emotions neatly and acceptably repressed. I rose to my feet, looking down at him.

"Fuck you." His dilapidated face turned to astonishment, the bandage holding the left side of his face together seeming to sink into his face as his thin arms did into the back of the cane chair upon which he was perched. I continued.

"You want me to respect you on your deathbed? You want to pretend like nothing ever happened? I should be celebrating this right now! And yeah, somewhere inside, I'm really enjoying watching you suffer. In fact, I fully intend to dance on your grave, just so you know." I was enraged, uncontrollable. But I kept that anger to a low volume, lest a nurse hear me.

Perhaps a tear of regret or guilt or maybe even shame welled in his eye (I couldn't tell in my incensed state) as he spoke in a tone weak even for him. "I'm sorry. I mean, for-"

"No, don't bother. I'll never forgive you." I paused, catching a breath and recomposing myself. "I am fucked up in the head because of you. Do you even get it? I don't think so."

My memory pulsated vibrantly and painfully as I looked down at the old tiger in disgust, ready to finish the job that cancer was taking too long to do.

"Fuck you, and your fucking lilies." I snapped myself out of the thought train, and left the balcony and the old tiger.

***

"I'm home, Mum!" I called to her as I did every other afternoon. And as with every other afternoon, I got no response. I shook my head, using the comprehensive map of the apartment built into my head to close the door and navigate to my room. I lay on the bed and called out again.

"It's good news!" I thought she might be excited about that. There was still no reply.

I rose from the bed, wandering out to investigate. Right into the hall, two paces down, another ri-

I kicked something. Something organic - something soft, but firm. Some_one_. I crouched down, running my hands over it's face to try to identify the mysterious body. I felt my heart skip a beat, and then restart at twice normal speed when I realised it was my mother. I shook her body, called her name and, in the absence of a response, felt for that little plastic canister in each of her paws.

And there it was: a small pharmaceutical container poised gently in her barely closed hand. I didn't need to feel for the Braille imprinted on the side of the cylinder to know it was oxycodone, but the closure granted the situation an air of reality. My heart fell into my stomach as I dashed for the telephone, and tears began to fall from my useless eyes.