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Brian's not used to standing on the sidelines of an emergency.

Mother's Day

LaVieEnRose



Evan pointed out the screen, his beer dangling dangerously from his fingers. “Okay, wait, what was that one?”


Foul. Pass interference.


“So he…got in the way of the other guy catching the ball?”


Yep, So automatic first down where the foul was called.


“Is that a common one?”


Yeah, happens all the time.


He settled back on the couch, tucking himself under my arm. “I think if they happen all the time they shouldn’t be fouls. Like they should just incorporate them into the game at that point.”


You’ve seen all of two football games and you’re rewriting the rules.


“You’ve always telling me I’m a fast learner.”


Tell that to the driver’s license you still don’t have.


He got up a few minutes later to get another beer and narrowed his eyes as he turned towards the window. “Uh. Molly’s here.”


Molly’s here?


“Coming up the driveway.”


I don’t know why that girl has a fucking moral objection to calling first. I sighed and stretched. All right, let her in. So much for a quiet evening.


Evan opened the front door and said hi to Molly, and I held my beer out to her without really looking up. “Here. Catch up.”


She didn’t take it. “Where’s Justin?”


I turned the volume down on the game. Sleeping. He had a seizure.


Wake him up.


I snorted. No. You ever tried waking postictal Justin up before he’s ready to be conscious? Once I roused him really gently to tell him hey, the gallery just called and one of your paintings sold, isn’t that nice, and he told me he hoped I got hit by the F train. I mean, Christ, of all trains.


Evan sat down on the arm of the couch. “Is something wrong?”


I can’t… She shook her head. I just…something happened.


Okay. I turned the TV off. What do you mean, something happened?


I need to talk to Justin first. Can you wake him up?


The real problem wasn’t that he’d be an asshole, obviously. He’s only been out for half an hour. He’s going to start seizing again if we force him up, and he’s not going to be able to process anything we tell him right now.


“Goddamn it,” she whispered.


“Molly,” I said.


Just get your fucking laptop and find plane tickets, she said. We have to go home.


I felt Evan reach for my hand, and I squeezed his fingers without really meaning to. My stomach felt cold. Tell me what happened, I said.


She bounced a little on the balls of her feet and then said, It’s Mom, and my stomach fell to the floor.


**


We were still working on getting tickets, the three of us crowded around my laptop on the kitchen counter, when Justin emerged from the bedroom, his hair messed up and his eyes squinty, Martha following behind and watching him. I checked my watch and shook my head. It hasn’t even been an hour. Go back to sleep.


Why… he tried, but his hand was all clenched up. “Why is Molly here?”


She started to say something, but I put my hand on her arm to stop her. It can wait. He’s still postictal. Why are you up?


“I…needed something. Why is Molly here?”


I sighed. Do you remember what you needed?


“No.” But he had his hand pressed up this cheekbone, like he does when he’s getting a migraine.


I got up and grabbed his meds and came over to him while I opened the bottles. Under your tongue, here.


He let me, but then said, “Why is Molly here?” again, and I could hear tears behind his voice. Nothing fucks him up after a seizure like something messing with his routine. He’s already confused enough just by his fucking normal life without throwing something new in there. And obviously he knows Molly like he knows himself, and he could tell she was upset, even if he was too fucked up to really register that what he was seeing. Of course he was overwhelmed. And he didn’t even have a fraction of the story yet. God.


Will you sit down at least, please? I said and, small mercies, he let me lead him over to the couch. Did you sleep at all?


“I don’t know. What’s going on?”


We… I looked at Molly and shook my head. You need to sleep a little more. You have to understand, this wasn’t me coddling him; I just felt like he literally would not have been able to understand if I’d told him then. I was worried he’s get completely upset without even understanding why, and then he’d fall back asleep, and then he’d wake up and remember that something was wrong but have no idea what and we would have had to go through the whole fucking thing over again.


He’d already started to shake just from being so, so tired. “Does Molly need me?”


She will in a little while. You don’t have to go back to bed, just sleep right here. Okay?


And I swear, I actually thought I was going to win one for once in my fucking life. I thought I had it. But as soon as I started to lay him down, he stiffened and set his face in that determined expression I have never, not ever, managed to break through, and said, “Tell me what’s going on.”


Sunshine.


“It’s Friday night, Molly and Evan are in the kitchen, we’re all at home, I’m groggy because I had a seizure. See? I can handle it. What’s going on?”


Damn it. Goddamn it.


What I was not going to do, at the very least, was tell him this in front of Molly. I knew he’d want to have a game face on for her, and he didn’t need to be worried about how she would take whatever reaction he needed to have. I beckoned Evan over and said, small, Take Molly…somewhere, okay? Here, take Martha, go for a walk.


I don’t know if I should take Martha. He doesn’t look good.


I’m not going to leave him, I said, and Evan nodded and picked Martha up, then went over to Molly and nudged her out the door. Molly didn’t put up the fight I was expecting; maybe deep down she didn’t want to be the one to tell Justin this. Who would?


I ran my palm down my face and gave Justin’s hand a quick kiss. Your mom was in a car accident.


“Um.” He shook his head a little and swallowed. “Uh, yeah. Okay.”


Molly doesn’t have a lot of information. I know she’s in surgery right now and I know it’s…it’s not great.


“What kind of surgery?”


I don’t know.


“Who did Molly talk to?”


Craig. I didn’t have a ton of details on the matter, but I knew in the past couple years the two of them had become…well, not friends exactly, but friendly acquaintances, at least, largely because of Luke getting sort of entangled up with Gus and Mel and Lindz and the rest of them and Craig doing what he does best and caving to whatever stronger influences come his way. The rules of who hospitals will and will not contact during emergencies have never been clear to me, since when you’re relying on them to not discriminate against you for being gay or Deaf or both it’s really a luck of the draw situation, but it wasn’t ridiculous that Craig would be in the know. Jennifer hadn’t dated anyone seriously in a while, and she didn’t have any other family in Pittsburgh.


Justin nodded slowly, then said, “Fuck.”


I know.


“Is she gonna be…”


I licked my lips and took his hand. I hope so.


He nodded again and swiped at his eye. I’ll never understand how he does that, cries so softly that I don’t even fucking notice. He cleared his throat. Okay. When’s the next plane?


Eleven o’clock tonight, but…Sunshine, I don’t think you’re going to be able to get on a plane in three hours. Your head’s already killing you.


I can do it if I need to.


I know you can, but you’re going to be so sick by the time we get there, you won’t be able to do anything. It makes more sense to rest tonight and get a plane tomorrow.


Let’s drive, then.


It’s not as if I hadn’t considered it. It’s a lot easier on Justin, but it’s still not a cakewalk, with how motion sick he gets. Are you sure? It’s seven hours.


So we’ll get there almost as fast as we would on the plane, if we leave now. I can sit in a car. I’ll be fine.


We’ll need to get a rental. My car won’t fit all of us.


Okay, so we’ll get a rental.


Let me call the car service.


Yeah. I can start packing.


Please just sit, I said. I promised Evan I’d watch you.


I was still on the phone with the rental car place when Evan and Molly and Martha came back. Justin and Molly had some small conversation I couldn’t see, and then he hugged her for a long time and she dug her fingers into his back. Evan kissed Justin’s cheek.


I waved for Evan’s attention and then said, We’re going to drive. Can you start packing?


Yeah. He touched Justin’s arm and said, Listen, if it’s easier for you, I can stay here. I don’t want you to have to deal with me and…everyone right now.


No, Justin said.


This isn’t a test, Evan said. I mean it. This does not need to be a Here’s Evan, Our New Costar moment.


I mean it too. I want you there. Please come. I…I can’t do this without you.


Evan looked at me.


Come, I said. We’re probably going to be avoiding them all anyway. I’m guessing Justin doesn’t want the Pittsburgh crew camped out in the hospital waiting room.


Oh, Jesus, Justin said. Yeah, let’s keep this quiet for now. Is that okay?


Okay with who, them? I said. Who the fuck cares what they think about this? Sorry we didn’t invite everyone to Jennifer’s car accident? Please.


Debbie’s going to fucking kill me for not telling her, Justin said.


She’ll have plenty of time for that later, I said, then nodded to Evan. You’re coming. Start packing.


By the time we’d finished packing–Justin comes with a lot of supplies, and we didn’t know how long we were going to be down there–the rental car had arrived, along with Molly’s boyfriend, this nice enough, if somewhat bland, guy named Cameron who she’d been dating for about six months at that point. Molly called Craig to see if there was any more news, but there really wasn’t. She was still in surgery. There was a lot of internal bleeding. They still didn’t know.


Do you think you can sleep? I asked Justin as we got into the car.


I think so. Maybe.


Try to, okay? You’re shaking a ton. He could barely fasten his seatbelt.


He did, eventually, probably because I’d had him load up on Benadryl to power him through being trapped in an enclosed space with a dog for seven hours. He had an ice pack on his neck for the migraine, and he twisted his hands for a while in the passenger seat and I kept thinking he was about to say something, but finally he curled up with his knees up to his chest and fell asleep against the window. I kept an eye on him, but Martha slept peacefully in his lap and never gave any sign he was headed for another seizure, and she usually wakes him up for nightmares, too, so I figured he was probably okay. Or, you know, as okay as he could be, given the circumstances.


The car ride was mostly quiet. Molly and Cameron talked a little bit, but Evan couldn’t really read their lips from the angle he had, and Cameron had learned a handful of signs to talk to Justin but wasn’t anywhere near conversational. I made eye contact with Evan in the rearview mirror a few times, but what was there really to say? He’d give me this half-smile and I gave him one back, and I was just filled with this overwhelming relief that he was here. that I didn’t have to somehow figure out what the fuck to do in this situation by myself.


We’d never dealt with this. I had no idea how he was going to react. No one close to Justin had ever died.


Not that she…


We stopped about two hours out at a diner in Bedford to piss and eat something and stretch out. They clearly hadn’t heard of service dogs in this hellhole and the waiter gave Justin some shit about Martha that neither of us was in any mood to deal with, so Justin just started signing really fast at him until he gave up and let us in. We sat in a booth by the window and looked out at the parking lot. It was about one in the morning and everything felt so soft and fake.


I think Evan and I were the calmest, just by virtue of the fact that, well, it wasn’t our mother, and also…we’d done this. We’d sat around waiting for news from hospitals. Molly had some experience with that too, obviously, but she was used to having her updates managed and curated. Now we all knew she was the one Craig was going to call, and she couldn’t stop checking her phone.


And then there was Justin, who’d virtually never been on this side of the proverbial table before. We shouldn’t be stopping, he said, not for the first time since we’d pulled over.


Starving yourself will not make her surgery go any faster, I said, as bored as I could. You need to be in fighting shape when you get there. I lined his meds up on the table.


Should I try calling? Molly said.


He’d call if there was news, I said.


I could tell they were both irritated with me for being calm, and I exchanged looks and shrugs with Evan about it, because…yeah, okay, but what was the alternative, I start queening out in the middle of a diner and they have to take care of me, too? It was my job to be annoyingly stable. I might not have known much about what to do here, but I knew that nothing pissed me off more than outsiders coming to me with their fucking feelings when something was wrong with Justin. You project outwards; you take that shit elsewhere. Well, now Molly and Justin were at the center of this mess, and me, Evan, and our buddy Cameron here, our job was to be normal so the two of them could fall apart.


Not that either of them really were. Molly twisted her fingers up in the cuffs of her jacket and gave Cameron one-word answers when he tried to talk to her, and Justin dutifully took his meds and then scratched a hole in the knee of his jeans. I took his hand eventually when he was driving me fucking crazy, and he let me.


We ate in largely uncomfortable silence until Molly let her fork clatter to her plate. “This is fucking ridiculous,” she said. “How can he not have more information than this? I mean, are talking like she tore some fucking cartliage in her knee or are they in there trying to sew her head back on?”


Molly, you’re not signing, I said, just…as a reflex, I guess, because it was so surprising to me that she wouldn’t sign when Justin was right here.


It’s okay, Justin said.


“I can’t…fucking think in two languages right now,” Molly said, simcomming this time. Molly’s a strong signer, strong enough that I forget a lot of the time that she’s not really fluent to the degree that the rest of us are. She learned later than I did, for one, and also I’m singing at work, when I go out, obviously at home. Molly spends a fair amount of time with Justin and the rest of the Deaf kids, but she has her own life, and she’s not signing unless she’s with us.


Don’t worry about it, Justin said to her. I understand anyway.


**


It was exactly three AM when we pulled into the parking lot of Allegheny General. Hardly my first three AM awake here, I thought vaguely.


Justin and I could navigate the place easily, obviously, but even I was surprised by how quickly we found a familiar face, and even more surprised that that familiar face was Luke, at a vending machine between the elevators and the fifth floor waiting room. It’d been a while since I’d seen him. He was a lot taller, and he’d grown out of being the exact spitting image of Molly and Justin, but he still had that blond hair, and obviously his CI.


“Lukey,” Molly said, and when he didn’t notice–CIs are not a miracle–she jogged up to him and touched his shoulder.


“Molly!” He dropped the candy bar he was holding and hugged her tight. “I didn’t know if you were gonna come.” He ran over to Justin and hugged him. Hi, Justin. And Martha.


Hi, sweetheart. Where’s your dad?


Luke pointed behind him to the waiting room, then said, “Hi, Brian.”


Hey, Luke. Little past your bedtime, isn’t it?


I could tell he didn’t understand–apparently I’d been a little optimistic about how his signing was coming along–and he looked to Justin for help. “Oh,” he said, after Justin interpreted for him. “Yeah. I’m not really tired though. I don’t know. I’m worried about your mom.”


You should go home, honey, Justin said to him. Where’s your mom?


“She’s here with Dad.”


I’d never met Craig’s wife, Tanya, but against all odds from what I’d heard from Molly she sounded like a decent person. I was kind of snarly at first that she’d put a CI in Luke rather than teach him how to sign, and then Justin showed me the statistics on what percentage of parents actually learn sign language for their kids. It’s bleak. So I guess I can’t judge her too much for that. Obviously she had the questionable taste to marry Craig, but Luke seemed happy and healthy enough for someone raised with that asshole, so it seemed like she was tempering him a bit. Hell of a way to spend your one precious life, isn’t it: compensating for a shitty husband. But that’s straight people for you, I guess.


Luke led us down to the waiting room, which was pretty empty this time of night. Craig and Tanya stood up when they saw us, and Craig gave Molly a rather awkward hug and said, “Hi, honey.”


“Yeah, hey. Uh, this is my boyfriend, Cameron. Hi, Tanya.”


Craig turned to Tanya and said, “My son, Justin,” and waved his hand vaguely in my direction and said, “Brian,” and then made eye contact with me long enough to nod, which was a warmer welcome than I’d been expecting, not that I had really been in my feelings one way or another about Craig’s reaction to me.


Justin said shook his hand and said, “Um, this is Evan, he–”


Nope, Evan said immediately. No title, not necessary, Evan’s fine. “Nice to meet you,” he added to Craig, who looked a little confused but nodded a little.


“Is Mom still in surgery?” Molly asked.


“They said she got out about an hour ago, but they still have her in recovery. They said we can see her tomorrow, if…everything goes well tonight.”


I signed it for Justin; we hadn’t even bothered trying to get an interpreter at this time of night. “What was the surgery?” Justin said.


“Repairing her hip and her ribs, and there was something with, uh…”


“Her spleen,” Tanya said gently.


“Yeah. They had to take her spleen out. And there was some other internal bleeding.” Craig sighed. “A lot of internal bleeding.”


“But is she going to be okay?” Molly said.


Craig kind of faltered there, good man in a storm that he is, and Tanya stepped in. “They told us they would know a lot more tomorrow based on how the recovery from this surgery goes,” she said. “It’s possible there are going to need to be follow-up surgeries. They said right now we really just need to see how tonight and tomorrow go.”


Molly wasn’t handling this all that well, and Cameron put his arm around her shoulders. Justin was calm, just watching me sign.


Everyone gradually sat down and shared what meager additional information there was, and Craig asked Molly some polite questions about New York and essentially ignored the child he couldn’t talk to, but honestly at that point I think Justin was too wrecked to notice. He was holding it together, but I could tell he was in pain, and his breathing was sounding really swampy. Craig and Tanya kept glancing at him when the wheezing got especially bad, and Justin at least pretended not to notice. Molly was sitting next to him, and she reached behind him at one point to scratch lightly between his shoulder blades.


I caught Evan’s eye and got him to follow me a few steps away. We’re not sitting around here all night, I said to him. Can you start…easing him into that fact?


Yeah, okay. Where are we going?


That proved to be the real challenge, actually; Justin agreed to leaving and coming back in the morning surprisingly easily. I don’t want Molly thinking she needs to wait around here all night, he said to me privately, and if setting a good example for his sister was what would get him to fucking take care of himself, far be it from me to argue. But that meant, obviously, that he was sending Molly and Cameron to Jennifer’s condo, which wasn’t really big enough for us to cram into as well. We couldn’t exactly get a decent hotel room at three in the morning, and I wasn’t putting Justin in some raggedy motel. Obviously crashing with Craig here was low on our list of options, and I could have called Melanie and Lindsay, but Gus was naturally going to have some feelings about finding out his grandmother was in critical condition that I figured we’d all rather not navigate with no notice in the middle of the night.


So I called Michael.


“Brian? Christ, it’s the middle of the–what’s going on? Is–?”


“He’s fine.”


“Fuck. Jesus. Okay.”


I told him the whole spiel and of course he said he’d get the guest room ready, and then we hugged Luke and told Tanya and Craig thanks for sticking around and we’d see them tomorrow, dropped Molly and Cameron off at the condo, and hightailed it to Michael’s. They opened the front door as soon as we pulled into the driveway and met us as we got out of the car to take our bags. Ben hugged Justin for a long time–they’re close–and Michael me, and then of course they were all over themselves apologizing and saying hi to Evan. It was too dark out here for the boys to talk much, so I ushered everyone inside, a hand on Justin’s back to keep him steady.


Any of you need some tea? Ben asked. Maybe spiked?


Justin nodded heavily, and yeah, what the hell, so we all had some tea with a hefty slug of whiskey and just decompressed in the living room for a bit. They didn’t make Justin talk, thankfully, and he mostly stared into his mug with Martha curled at his feet while Evan and I asked questions about Ivy and Hunter and Debbie or whatever the fuck else wasn’t Jennifer.


Justin took a shuddery breath and wiped his eyes, and I just felt…far from him in this way I couldn’t explain. It’s just that nothing’s really touched Justin in a way that hasn’t also gotten me before. I’d never really just sat and watched him feel something without also being down there in the weeds.


I took his hand.


We should all probably get some sleep, Evan said. He tucked Justin’s hair behind his ear. Can you sleep?


Yeah. Yeah, of course.


Except…yeah, not so much, it turned out. We crammed ourselves into the queen bed in their guest room, Justin on the edge with oxygen and me in the middle, and Evan was out just about the second he took his hearing aids out, and I would have been too if I had the power to turn off my ears, but unfortunately here we are, and Justin was struggling. Ben and Michael are neat, but ‘neat’ and ‘clean enough for Justin’ are two very different beasts, and obviously we hadn’t given them a ton of notice that we were coming for them to sterilize the place. So basically he was trying to sleep but his allergies were trying to kill him, and it seemed like they were winning. I lay there feeling some ambivalent emotion between extreme sympathy and extreme annoyance while he wheezed and sneezed and rubbed the shit out of his eyes, and when he fell into a coughing fit that seemed like it was never going to end, I sighed and ran my hand up and down his arm, comforting, while Martha paced the floor in agitated circles.


Finally he rolled over onto his back with a groan. “I’m sorry.”


I shrugged. Not your fault.


“I don’t–” he cut himself off with a sneeze. “Ugh. I don’t think this is going to stop. Maybe you should sleep on the couch? I’m sorry.”


I suppose it’s progress that you didn’t offer to sleep on the couch. I said, and he smiled ruefully. I ran my hand down my face. Let’s give your meds a chance to kick in. You want to get some air?


I kind of want more of that tea.


Come on. I waited patiently while he untangled himself from the sheets and eased off the bed, then slid out behind him, careful not to disturb Evan, and I followed him out of the guest room, Martha at our heels. Justin paused at the top of the stairs to let me go ahead of him: seizure protocol.


He sank heavily into a chair as soon as we were in the kitchen, so I started getting out the stuff to make tea. I waved for his attention after a minute. You want to talk?


He shrugged and reached down to give Martha a few scratches, then said, “I’m trying to remember the last conversation I had with her. Like, a real conversation, you know?”


Seeing as I could count the lifetime number of ‘real conversations’ I’d had with anyone other than him on one hand, I seemed like the wrong person to weigh in on this one, So I nodded.


“And I can’t remember. I have no idea when the last time was that we really talked. I just feel like the worst son in the world.”


That’s fucking stupid. You two are close.


“We used to be close,” he said. “And then I went Deaf, and she didn’t really learn to sign, and I pulled away. I didn’t mean to, but I did.”


You also moved out of state, and grew up, I said. Normal, grown-up stuff. Nothing there that makes you a bad son.


It did kind of get me thinking, though. I hadn’t really made a secret out of the fact that I resented the people in Justin’s life who hadn’t put in the required effort to keep talking to him after he lost his hearing, and that included Jennifer. I couldn’t deny that these past few years there’d been a little flame of anger deep down whenever we were dealing with her. And that’s not to say that she and I weren’t…that we didn’t get along. We did, and so did she and Justin. But that nagging feeling was always there.


And now it just seemed so fucking unimportant. Which was very bizarre, because language access for Justin is rarely a backburner sort of issue for me, but Christ, I guess anything can be put in proportion under the right circumstances. Because no, she was not a great signer, and she could have tried harder, but she did try. There was something. And there was never any question that she loved Justin, and obviously that gives someone a fair amount of points where I’m concerned.


“God.” He wiped his eyes. “It’s fucked up. I miss her. It’s not like…you know, if it was an ordinary fucking day, that I would have seen her or whatever. And now it’s like I don’t know how to go another minute without talking to her. Do you think she’s in pain?”


I sat down at the table and slid the mug across from him. I don’t know.


“Are you okay?”


Yeah, I’m fine. I shrugged. Doing the husband thing.


He laughed a little. “You’re doing fine.”


So are you.


**


Exhaustion won out eventually, and we both ended up getting some sleep. I woke up early and had to fight every instinct to bury my nose in Justin’s hair and pass back out, but once the memories of the night before started coming back…well, I woke up a little.


I sat up and checked my phone–nothing, presumably Molly was still asleep–and then called the hospital to see what they could tell me. Unsurprisingly I couldn’t get any details about them, but luckily I speak hospital, so I knew what it meant when they told me Jennifer’s condition was “serious.” Still not out of the woods, but a step up from critical. A good sign, if not a great one.


Justin fussed into his pillow a little. His eyes were really swollen, from crying or allergies or both.


I didn’t want to wake him yet, but I needed a cup of coffee like I couldn’t describe, so I maneuvered myself out between the two of them and climbed over the foot of the bed. Evan stirred as I got dressed. “Any news?” he said.


Not really. She’s alive.


“That counts as news.”


I sighed. I guess. Go back to sleep.


Where are you going?


Coffee. I’ll bring back food. Stay with him?


Evan nodded and squirmed closer to Justin, nuzzling his face into his hair, and I felt an irrational pang of jealousy considering I’d gotten up on my own accord. And honestly, as tempting as getting back in that warm bed with those two boys was on an intellectual level, I was too agitated at that point. Just antsy. I didn’t really get it, but I didn’t feel right.


I signaled Martha up and took her for a quick walk, dropped her back off with the boys, and then left. And yes, there are a hundred thousand places to get coffee in this town, and yes, I passed by any number of them on my way to the Liberty Diner and any one of them would have been a better choice, but…I don’t know. I felt like something familiar, and I was kind of walking on autopilot at that point, and I figured it was so fucking early that the chances of running into anyone I knew were infinitessimal.


Yeah, first person I saw was Debbie. Behind the counter, screeching my name, jolting me back fifteen years in an instant. “When the fuck did you get here?” she said, throwing her arms around me, and over her shoulder I saw Emmett and Lindsay rise up from a table in the corner and begin their descent. Christ.


“I thought you retired,” I said.


“Oh, you know, I like to come in every now and then for a shift. It’s not good to have too much free time! Makes you old. Gives you hemorrhoids. All that crap. Where’s Sunshine?”


“Back at the hotel.” No need to rat Michael out as a co-conspirator. I kissed Lindsay’s cheek. “Fuck are you two doing here at this hour?”


“Emmett’s planning an event for the center!” Lindsay said. “And with his schedule now that he’s got all those contracts, plus we’re both early risers, you know how I’ve always–”


You could have stayed in bed, Kinney. No one had a gun to your head.


“Sit, sit!” Emmett said, and they ushered me over to their booth. “I am just dying to hear all about New York.”


I said, “Just…generally New York? All of it?”


“Yes! I haven’t been there in years. Tell me everything that’s changed.”


“Uh. The bodegas are banks.” I looked up at Debbie. “Coffee?”


“Sure thing, sweetheart. You know you look half-dead. Long night?”


“You could say that.”


She chuckled as she headed back behind the counter. “Good for you and Justin! Keeping it hot after all these years.”


“Yeah, just doing our civic duty.” I rubbed my eyes, and when I stopped, Lindsay was watching me with her mom face on. Oh Lord.


“You really do look tired,” she said softly. “How’s Justin?”


And I probably should have just slapped on a grin and said he was great, but I don’t know. It felt wrong to lie about it, like it was bad luck or something. Like the universe was going to hear me say Justin was hunky-dory while his mom was unconscious and go oh, cool, he doesn’t need her, let me sharpen my scythe.


“Something’s wrong with Justin?” Emmett said.


“There are at any given time at least five things wrong with Justin,” I said, which is the kind of dark humor that flies well in New York but apparently not here, because they just got all uncomfortable. God. “He’s hanging in there, like he always does.”


Debbie put a mug in front of me and says, “You two will come by the house later, won’t you? How long are you here?”


“Uh…not sure yet.” I flashed her a smile and took a sip. “And I don’t know if he’s feeling up to socializing. I’ll check with him. He had a rough night.”


“You should have stayed with him!” Debbie said. “We’ll deliver! We have a Doordash now, didya know that?”


“Evan has him,” I said, which just fell out of my mouth, but then I realized this was most definitely the move. We were supposed to be telling the Pittsburgh people about him anyway, and what better way to distract from the actual situation at hand than to introduce a surprise love interest?


So when the obvious, “Who’s Evan?” question followed, I responded with a casual shrug and an offhand “Justin’s boyfriend,” that I knew would invite plenty of distraction. And boy, was I not wrong.


Justin’s boyfriend?”


“The fuck do you mean, boyfriend?”


“Did you two break up?


“He’s cheating on you?”


“How long have you known about this?”


“What, so you’re not enough for him all of a sudden?” (Bet you can guess who chimed in with that one.)


“Wait, so are you sleeping with him too?”


“He lives in your house?”


I could do these questions in my sleep, naturally, and I plowed through them easily and lazily, but I don’t know, the whole thing just made me kind of sad. It’s not that I think the setup that the three of us have is for everyone, but it was depressing how quickly they’d write it off because it was new and unfamiliar and…well, let’s use the word: queer. The fact that two gay people and the self-proclamied Ally of the Year couldn’t accept a relationship because it was unconventional just bummed me out, frankly. And maybe this makes me sound like some snobby New Yorker, I don’t know, but Christ, the world is so much bigger and stranger and more subversive than two men exchanging rings. And here we were just sitting around judging something we didn’t understand like we hadn’t been judged our whole life by people who didn’t understand.


It just reminded me why I hated coming back here. These people, they make boxes for everyone, and God forbid you stray out of them. They want to hold you and study you and criticize you for exactly the traits they want to hold you and study you and criticize you for, thank you very much. Trap you in eternal boyhood and then sell tickets for it.


Whatever. I told them about Evan’s kidney transplant to garner some sympathy from the healthy people and get them to stop thinking of him as the antichrist, I pulled out my phone and showed them a couple of pictures of the three of us clearly not miserable, whatever whatever whatever. Help them sleep at night. And once I couldn’t fucking take it anymore I changed the subject to Gus and let myself sink into Lindsay talking about him for a while, and that helped. I was still so goddamn irritated, though. From the Evan thing, obviously, but also I recognized that I was pissed at them for not asking or caring about how Jennifer was doing, which was obviously insane of me since I hadn’t told them about Jennifer and didn’t want them to know. But some irrational part of me thought that they should have, I don’t know, figured it out, and it pissed me off that we were sitting here picking my love life apart and eating hash browns when Jennifer was fighting for her life and Justin was terrified.


But, again. No one held a gun to my head and made me come here.


I finally convinced them I better get back to my poor sick greedy cheating husband and Debbie loaded me up with blueberry pancakes and to-go cups of hot chocolate and sent me on my way. Evan was in the living room when I got back, drawing with Ivy at her art table. I pulled him up and kissed him.


“What was that for?” he asked me.


Very happy to see you. I held my arms out to Ivy and hugged her. Where is everyone?


“Ben had an early class. Michael’s in the kitchen I think. Justin’s showering. Martha’s watching him.”


How is he?


“I’m not sure. I think he got sick of me hovering. He’s quiet. Have you heard from Molly at all?”


Not yet.


“Yeah, neither have we.”


I brought the food into the kitchen and started unloading everything. Michael was making breakfast for Ivy, and he looked over at my haul and raised an eyebrow. “You went to the diner?”


“Yeah, I know. Big mistake.”


“Ma was there?”


“Mmhmm. And Emmett and Lindsay.”


“God. Did you tell them what’s going on?”


I shook my head. “Justin doesn’t want people to know yet. I think he just…doesn’t want to tell them until there’s something to tell, y’know? Otherwise they’re all just going to be nagging him for an update every two minutes.”


“That must have been hard,” Michael said. “Hiding that from them.”


“It’s fine.”


“Brian…”


Mikey…


“I just want to make sure you’re, you know. Getting the support you need.”


“I’m fine. This isn’t about me.”


“She’s your mother-in-law. And I know you guys are close.”


“Michael. It’s not about me.”


“I just want you to know that–”


“Jesus Christ! I’m fine. Drop it.” I heard someone on the stairs. “Shut up, he’s coming down.”


“He can’t hear us…”


I wasn’t really in the mood to admit he had a point, so I went and met Justin and Martha at the stairs. I held out my arms, eyebrows up, and he smiled just a little and pulled himself up and into me.


I kissed his cheek and let him go. Your breathing sounds terrible.


I’m just stressed. You haven’t heard from Molly, have you?


No. I’ll call her in a minute. Come eat something. You take your meds?


He nodded and went into the kitchen, where Michael pushed food at him and nagged him about hearing him coughing last night and he was so sorry and what could he do to make Justin more comfortable and Justin did the kind of minimizing and demuring that I’d normally never stand for, but I just let him. He didn’t have it in him to advocate for himself right now. Couldn’t really blame him. I’d make sure to go over the place with a vacuum and wash the bedding in hot water before he tried to sleep in there again, which would probably do a lot to take the edge off.


I tried not to study him too obviously while he and Evan ate pancakes and Michael fed the kid, but I don’t know, it was hard. His hands were shaky, and he really wasn’t breathing well, and he just wasn’t in a state where I wanted him out and seen by people and dealing with shit. All the shit with Jennifer aside, I would have wanted to take care of him today, so it just felt fucking awful to think about the day he had in front of him.


My phone rang when everyone was cleaning up. Molly. I answered, and Justin leaned against the counter and watched me.


“What’s going on?” I said.


She was tired, but calm. “She made it through the night. Hasn’t woken up yet. We’re heading over to the hospital now. Are you guys coming?”


I looked at Justin. “Yeah, we’ll be there soon.”


**


I saw Jennifer, but not for long. We were only allowed in there two at once, so after Justin was sure he could handle it, I left so Molly could come in. Evan, Cameron and I sat awkwardly in the waiting room looking at their backs through the window, Justin’s arm around Molly’s shoulders, Jennifer lying there covered in tubes and bruises.


It’s funny. I’m pretty much a pro at waiting around hospitals, but I was doing a shit job of it today. I kept getting up to pace around and peer through a window and check the clock on the wall, like I wasn’t wearing a watch, or like any amount of time passing really meant anything today.


“So they think she’s going to wake up today?“ Cameron asked us.


“Yeah, they’re hoping so.” We’d gotten a bit more information from a doctor and an interpreter when we arrived. They’d seemed…somewhat hopeful? It’s hard to say. Our doctors in New York knew to just give it to us straight, but I couldn’t read these guys.


“How’s Molly doing?” Evan asked Cameron.


“She’s kind of a mess. I mean, I would be too, no judgments here. I don’t know, their relationship is weird. She and her mom talk on the phone like three times a week. And usually end up fighting. Molly’s always all fired up about something she said. But you can tell she loves her a lot. There was a lot of crying and raging last night.”


You get all that? I asked Evan, and he nodded.


“What about Justin?” Cameron said. He did the sign name. Good man.


“Justin…doesn’t really get to fall apart,” Evan said. “Stakes are pretty high if he doesn’t take care of himself.”


“Yeah. That’s fucked.”


“It kind of is, yeah.”


And that’s kind of just the fucking crux of it all, isn’t it? And it’s Evan too; he has to watch himself, monitor shit, track symptoms and medications and side effects. And it’s me, because obviously we’ve established the duty I have in play here, what’s my responsibility in this little life. We don’t get to fall apart around here.


After a couple hours I was coming out of my skin, so I went to the door of Jennifer’s room and waved for Justin’s attention. He was playing cards with Molly at a little table at the foot of the bed, and he came over and gave me a hug.


Doing okay? I said, and he nodded. “Molly, you need anything?”


She shook her head.


I’m going to go back to Michael’s and try to allergy-proof the place. Evan’s going to stay here with you. Okay?


“Okay. I’m probably going to head back soon too. I’m really tired.”


I kissed his forehead. Sounds good.


I managed to finish vacuuming before he and Evan got back to the house, but the sheets were still in the dryer, so he watched an episode of something and did a very needed nebulizer treatment and then went up to bed. Evan pulled together something for lunch, and I sat with my laptop and pretended to work and mostly just stared at my desktop while Michael got Ivy ready for her nap.


Evan came over and rubbed my shoulders, and I sighed and felt myself relax. “Come eat, please,” he said. So I did.


Michael joined us, and we ate sandwiches without really talking. “Why are you staring at me?“ I sim-commed–it’s just easier, otherwise I’d be turning and translating myself to Michael every ten seconds–to Evan eventually. I wasn’t really snapping at him, I was just…tired.


“Because you look like shit and I’m worried about you.”


“There is nothing to be…this is not about me.”


He won’t talk about it, Michael said. I tried.


“I’m here for Justin,” I said. “I don’t know why we’re acting like there’s any reality where my job here isn’t to be here for Justin.”


No one’s saying that, Michael said. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have feelings about it too.


“Justin doesn’t need to deal with my feelings right now,” I said.


“We’re not asking you to unload on Justin,” Michael said. “But I’m…we’re here, and we care about you.”


I looked across the table at Evan.


He put his chin in his hand, watching me, and shrugged a little. “Justin’s not here.”


“I don’t…” I said, and signed. “I don’t know what you want me to say. She’s the first person I met who loved Justin. Nobody else I knew fucking…but she did. She got it.” I tried looking at Michael, but he had that puppy dog expression on his face and the whole thing just meant too fucking much to him, so I turned back to Evan, who was steady, patient, calm. “She was the first person who thought I was good for him. And it…” I laughed a little. “It took her a while, trust me. As it should have. But she came around before anyone else did. Everyone else was still telling me all the time how I was fucking it up and how I wasn’t good enough and it wasn’t me so I couldn’t do it. Shouldn’t do it. But not her.”


I chanced a glance at Michael there, and he looked a little hurt or maybe a little ashamed. I didn’t really have a lot of feelings about that right now.


“She was there for him when nobody else was,” I said. “She’s picked up the slack for me a million times and never held it against me and she has loved me and, um, she might die. So that’s…yeah. That’s where I’m at, I guess.” I blinked down at the table and tried to get everything to stop swimming. I felt like I couldn’t remember the rhythm you were supposed to use to breathe. God, how does Justin fucking feel all this shit all the time?


“Brian,” Michael said, but Evan said, “Give him a minute.”


But I was saved from having to talk anymore, thank God, by my phone ringing in my pocket. I wiped my face off and pulled it out. Molly, I told them, and answered it. “Hey, what’s going on?”


“Is Justin there? He’s not answering his phone.”


“He’s asleep upstairs. Are you okay?”


“Yeah. Yeah, I’m good.” I could hear her smiling. “Mom’s awake.”


**


After the rushing and the hugging and the crying and the celebrating, there was calm. Molly was down in the cafeteria with Cameron. I was standing in the waiting room. And Justin was in his mother’s hospital room, introducing her to his boyfriend in slow, careful sign language.


Justin laughed and swiped at his eyes, and Jennifer reached out and took Evan’s hand.


I went in a while later, after Evan and Justin had stepped out to update our friends in New York. I pulled a chair up to the bed and sat down heavily. “Well,” I said to her. “Quite an ordeal.”


Jennifer smiled at me. “I’m so glad you were here for him.”


“Yeah, you know.” I shrugged. “There’s nowhere else.”


“Still. I have to say it.”

 

“I know.” I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Welcome back, Mom.”

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