I got a call on Thursday from a hospital two hours north. Uncle Victor is dying. They found my number on a scrap of paper in his wallet, which surprised me more than the news did. I didn't think he'd keep anything.

I drove up this morning.

I remember him differently from the man in that bed. When I was a kid, his visits were an event. Coin tricks. Quarters pulled from behind my ear. Presents wrapped in newspaper that never quite made sense. Then somewhere along the way, the strangeness that used to make him fun curdled into something else. He stopped visiting. He stopped calling. He drew his curtains and stayed behind them, and the rest of the family let him, until there wasn't a rest of the family left to let him do anything.

Now he's a shape under a hospital blanket. His skin is stretched over his bones like wet paper over a frame. Every breath sounds like dry leaves dragged across concrete.

When I leaned in, he grabbed my wrist. I've never felt a grip like that, not from a man who looked like he couldn't lift a spoon. His eyes were burning. He told me someone was coming for me. That I was the last of his blood. That after he died, a messenger would come.

The nurse said that kind of confusion is normal near the end.

I nodded and thanked her and didn't tell her what I was really thinking about, which was the tattoo on his forearm. A dark, twisting vine. I've seen it my whole life and never once asked about it. Today it reached past his elbow. I could swear it used to stop at the wrist.