Inheriting It
by Garrett Crowe

I have to call an 800 number cause my father’s oxygen machine starts buzzing. Lights go red. The whole alert. My father tells me he thinks the machine has “blown a rod.” He’s just breathing tube-air. Turns out, the machine’s been acting this way for weeks. My stepmom hasn’t done a thing except power the machine off, then power it back on, she’s fighting her own cancer, has her own cigs to smoke. My brother is nowhere to be found. And my father assures me he’s breathing just fine, even when his oxygen machine whines in a high-pitched frequency. I eventually track down a service.