Outrageous Fortune

LaVieEnRose

You could say I was being a little careful with Justin in the fall of 2013, which I only mention because we need to get it out of the way for this little tale to unravel. I'm not patting myself on the back for it, and it's not something I even noticed at the time, but as the weather was starting to cool down, so heated up that little kernel of Justin-panic I normally manage to keep under some semblance of control (let me live in my delusion, please).

Some of the reasons for this were nothing new. This is your partner on ragweed, for one, so he was pathetic to begin with, and he'd been working nonstop all summer, doing magazine interviews and commissions and flying around the country and generally taking the fucking world by storm, but that meant spending more time away from me than he had since LA, and let's not pretend it's news that I get a little twitchy when we're separated. And...yeah, there was also something else, this nagging thought I hadn't really unpacked that started when Evan got sick and it just a lingered, even though he was doing better. I don't want to act like this was some dramatic shift in the dynamics between the two of us, or even something really on my mind, it was just...there, in the background, barely noticed, adding a touch of color to everything.

Kinnetik was in the middle of acquiring this tiny ad firm with disproportionately talented personnel, so we were figuring out who was getting folded in and who we were letting go. I was pulling long days at the office, going in early and staying late, so yet again, barely seeing Justin. I woke up one morning and he was already out of bed, so, you know, fuck whatever time together we did get, I guess. He was sitting with his laptop at the kitchen table. He got up and poured me a cup of coffee when he felt my footsteps, and I peeked at his computer screen.

It's winter already? I said.

Justin furrowed his brow, lifting up on his toes to kiss me. It's October.

I tapped his screen and sipped my coffee—he puts this French vanilla shit in it, and as much as I sneer at it it's fucking good. Reading about plane crashes. That's winter. Justin's internet searches are one of the most reliable ways to track his mood; when he's slipping, it's all famines and missing children. And he has a hard time in winters, especially since he lost his hearing. I think it's the shorter days. He's always liked light—he's a fucking artist, and if you've seen him come alive under the Babylon spotlights like I have you'll understand—but it means more to him now that he can't hear. Light's his everything, so I think the seasonal depression hits him extra hard. Or maybe I'm full of shit, whatever, but regardless his mood's been dipping every winter for years now.

Justin chewed his thumbnail.

Did you sleep? I asked him. He hadn't had another round of going three days without sleep, thank whatever, but ever since that seizure that in June he'd been struggling with insomnia off and on. Just another problem to add to the pile. We were thinking about changing his meds, but that was just such a fucking awful undertaking, especially if he was already feeling shaky with mental health stuff. We would end up doing it, of course, a few months later, when his white blood cell count and his platelets took a fun nosedive, but hey, all in good time. Merry Christmas!

But for now he nodded. “Some.”

Well, small favors. I sipped my coffee and studied him. Therapy today?

“Yeah.”

Maybe mention this.

He sighed. “Yeah.”

I raked my knuckles over his cheek and kissed him. “Hey,” I said.

“Hey.”

Shower.

He nodded, stole a sip of my coffee, and let me pull him into the bathroom. I picked him up and fucked him with his legs around my waist, and he did a good job of convincing me I didn't need to be worried about him, I'll tell you that much. I was still panting when we got out of the shower, and I snagged him from behind and kissed his ear while he was shaving. What are you doing today? I signed in the mirror. He was back to having a semi-regular schedule, now that Emily was back at work and he watched the baby two days a week, but this wasn't one of those days.

He dragged the razor down his face. “Studio in the morning, therapy in the afternoon. Lunch with Daph.”

Good.

He gave me a look. “You don't have to worry about me. I'm okay.”

I'm just happy I can blame Daphne if I come home to you all depressed. She saw you last, you're her problem now.

He rinsed his face. “You need to get me on a babysitting schedule like Jane.”

Yeah, seems so.

He turned around and pouted at me. I kissed his nose.

I know I'm an annoying micromanager who treats you like a child, I said. Does knowing it absolve me?

No.

Then I'm out of ideas.

It's fine, he said, with a deep, put-upon sigh. Artforum said I'm one of the most exciting new voices of the New York intentism movement.

I remember.

Without you to knock me down a peg I'd probably let it go to my head.

Start bragging about it all the time. Force it into everyday conversation.

Exactly.

Well, we couldn't have that, I said, and maybe you'd think all of this would make me coddle him a little less for the next, I don't know, five minutes, but just then a text came in and I read it and looked at Justin and decided, nope, let's coddle.

“What's up?” Justin said.

My one o'clock meeting is now a nine o'clock, I said. I lie pretty well for someone who rarely does it.

Fuck, can you make it?

I need to hurry.

I'll help.

I let him do up my tie while I slipped into my shoes, feeling guilty as shit the whole time, and he kissed me while he handed me my briefcase. Have a good day, I told him.

He cocked his head to the side. Yeah, you too. Are you okay?

I'm great. I kissed him. Everything's fine.

**

I could hear Jane screaming before the door was even open. Emily looked harried as shit, her hair halfway done, her blouse on but still wearing sweatpants.

Well, I just lied to my boyfriend, I announced.

I never told you to lie. I'm innocent. She waved me in and started signing too fast for me to follow.

Slow down, I said.

Gwen was already gone when I realized the baby was sick, she's in surgery, I can't bother her. She's never been sick before. I don't know what's wrong.

Well, I can tell you one thing, she didn't get Justin's shitty lungs. I followed Emily to Jane's bassinet, where she was red-faced and screaming in a blue nightgown. She was getting bigger fast, and she was sitting up on her own and signing babytalk nonsense to herself most of the time. Generally a really happy baby, but not at the moment. Hey, monster, I said, and I picked her up and held her cheek against mine. Warm and clammy, but not that hot. What's her temperature?

A little over a hundred and two.

I kissed Janie's forehead and rocked her back and forth. That's okay in a six-month old.

She's barely six months.

Babies get sick, I said. She's okay. Gus used to run fevers all the time, he's healthy as a horse now. Did she nurse this morning?

Emily nodded a little, still bouncing anxiously. Janie started to quiet down a little in my arms.

All right, well the gospel of one Debbie Novotny says if they're eating and they're breathing, you don't worry too much with a baby. And as far as I know she hasn't killed any. I handed her back to Emily. Call Gwen if the fever doesn't go down or she starts throwing up. God knows she has more medical knowledge than I do.

That's cats.

She's not that different from a cat. I signed cat cat cat at Janie and grinned when she took a swipe at her face to imitate me. She's talking, I said to Emily. She'll live. I rubbed Jane's back. I'll tell Cynthia you're not coming in.

Thank you.

I kissed Janie's cheek, then Emily's. She's fine, Mom, I said.

Emily nodded.

**

You could spend a long time unpacking why I didn't tell Justin. I was, as we've established, already being a little gentle with him, and I knew that if I told him he'd rush right out to Queens and get himself a nice case of whatever Jane had, and at this point I knew I'd be in hot water for not telling him right away so clearly my only choice was to hide from him for the rest of our lives. And as to why I didn't tell him immediately, please review reasons A and B. Justin catastrophizes, did before he even had a run-in with an aluminum bat, and in the long run he's usually glad that I triaged a situation before I brought him into it. Usually. Okay, a lot more glad than I am when he tries to do the same to me, anyway.

It's not like I didn't have enough to keep me busy that day. Emily does so much that I forget that one of her most important duties is keeping people and their bullshit concerns they think need to be reported to upper management the fuck out of my office. Without her, it was amazing how many people came traipsing in here to tell me they had a deadline problem or a HR concern or a or a hangnail.

Evan came in twenty minutes before the big meeting that had not actually been moved from one PM to nine AM. “Hey,” he said. “I have the final boards for Trava. They wanted me to bring it up because you are scaring everyone. What do you think they think our relationship is?”

They just know I like Deaf people. Or, more accurately, hate hearing people. Also I'm not scary. Also, bolt the fucking doors shut before somebody else comes in here.

He laughed and held the boards up.

Yes. Beautiful. Thank you.

Sure. So what's with the easy walk into your office? Normally I have to get past your dragon.

My dragon is home today. Jane's sick. And Justin does not know, so—

Evan mimed handcuffing his wrists—think zipping lips. Is she okay?

Yeah, she's fine, she's got a fever. I just want to tell Justin in person in case he gets it in his head to march out and see her. I can hold him back, he's pretty small. Are you sitting in on this meeting?

Uh, yeah, if I'm invited.

Stephanie's here anyway to interpret for Emily, so otherwise she's just signing at a bunch of hearing people.

You weren't kidding about hating hearing people.

I don't kid. Stay in here until the meeting so no one else can bother me.

Okay. Want to help me choose an apartment?

Jesus, yes, I said, and he gave me his phone and we spent a while going through pictures of places that looked slightly less likely to give him tetanus than his current digs. Baby steps.

We strolled into the conference room at one, and I shook hands with the Trava Tea people. It was our first potential new client acquisition since the merger so it was important meeting; we were showing off to a whole new group of people and presenting a different team than we had before. None of this fucking matters, just take my word for it that it was a big meeting. I was up presenting with Isabel and Max, the head of the firm we'd acquired, when my phone started vibrating on the table. I nodded for Isabel's assistant to check it for me—having an epileptic partner means you don't ignore calls—and he glanced at the screen and signed Emily's name to me, and something in my chest went cold.

She knew when this meeting was. She wouldn't just call for nothing.

I apologized quietly and took my phone off the table and stepped outside the conference room. “Come on come on come on,” I whispered, waiting for the call to connect, and I had to close my eyes for a second when I immediately recognized a hospital hallway behind Emily's tear-streaked face. She didn't have the baby.

What happened? I said. Where is she?

They took her away, there's no interpreter, I don't know what's going on. She started crying again. She so rarely cries.

Emily. What the fuck happened?

She had a seizure, I didn't know what to do...I knew what to do during it, I didn't know what to do after, I brought her here and I typed it out on my phone and they just took her and someone said something about getting a fucking social worker and...I don't know where she is.

Okay, so a couple things here. I did already know that, as fucking scary as I'm sure it is to see a six-month-old have a seizure, febrile seizures aren't uncommon—J.R. had one when she was about this age, never had another—in babies and that Jane was almost definitely fine. And I knew that getting a social worker to talk to a panicky mother did not mean that anyone was trying to take Jane away from her parents. And I knew that this meeting I'd just walked out of was really fucking goddamn important.

But Emily was crying and Jane had had a fucking seizure, and I stood there signing some kind of nonsense trying to calm Emily down wondering what the fuck I was going to do. I could send Stephanie down there to interpret, but she hates medical work, and Emily doesn't even fucking like interpreters, but goddamn I could not skip out on this meeting, and I was working through all of this when the doors to the conference room opened and Evan came out.

He said, “Brian, I'll go.”

No, I—

—need to finish this meeting. I'm oral, I can interpret.

You shouldn't be hanging around hospitals.

My T-cells are great, I can show you my fucking blood work. I love Jane, I want to go. You can meet us there as soon as the meeting's finished. Be my boss and tell me to go.

I hesitated for another sentence and then handed him my phone, and he gave me his so at least I'd have something as he signed rapidly at the screen on his way out of the building.

I watched him go, took a deep breath, and waltzed back into the conference room with a smile on my face.

**

I caught up with them an hour later in the emergency room of a tiny Queens hospital. I found Gwen first and she hugged me for a long time. Evan found us a minute later, Janie in his arms, and I just about came out of my fucking skin waiting for him to get over with her. Hey, little one, hey, baby, I said. She stretched out an arm to me and I lifted her up. She felt a little cooler than she had this morning, and her eyes looked less glassy. Okay, there she is. I kissed her forehead. Good baby. She tucked her face into my neck and I palmed the back of her head. “Where's Emily?” I asked Evan, since my hands were full.

Calling her mom. They said we can go soon, they're just getting the discharge papers.

You see that? I said to Janie. You get to go home. I took her hand and made her sign it. Home. I looked around. Where’s Justin?

Evan and Gwen just stood there, looking guilty as fuck.

I set my jaw. Nobody called Justin?

Evan said, You said not to tell him!

That was before she had a seizure! It is hard to sign with your arms full of sick baby.

Emily came back, still shaky but a lot better than she’d looked on the phone. Gwen kissed her, and Evan put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her. Emily leaned her head against Evan and took Jane’s hand when I lowered her enough for her to reach. How‘s my girl? I’m so sorry, Jane.

She’s great, I said. Look how comfortable she is here. She’s gonna be a heart surgeon. I kissed her cheek and handed her to Emily, who tipped Jane against her shoulder and bounced her gently.

They said it's really common and she's okay, Emily said. She, unsurprisingly, had no problem balancing signing and baby. They said a lot of little kids have febrile seizures and it doesn't make it more likely they're going to have epilepsy. She winced a little and said, Not that that would be the worst thing, I just—

It's okay, I said. He's not here. It's fine. I put my hand on Jane's back. Speaking of...who's going to tell him?

They all looked at me except Janie, who stuck her thumb in her mouth and snuggled into Emily.

I said, Yeah, those are the faces I was expecting.

Emily said, He's going to be so upset and I just...I'm so tired.

Jesus, marry a guy once and you become all fucking responsible for his emotional well-being...

Emily rested her cheek against the top of Jane's head. Yeah, it's very hard to be you.

**

So I picked up Italian from this place Justin likes that's gonna make us both too fat to move one of these days and set the table when he texted saying he was on his way home from the studio. Which meant, of course, that he was all goddamn suspicious the second he got home, the psychic little shit. “Why are we eating at the table?” he said, which, I guess, fair enough. Usually the table's reserved for company or serious shit, and other times we like the cushions at the coffee table. Easier transition to getting him on his back after.

The pasta still needed a few more minutes to heat up, so okay, I guess we were doing this now. I came over while he dropped his messenger bag on the floor and put my hands o his shoulders for a second before I started signing. Jane is home now and she's fine, but she had to go to the ER today because she had a febrile seizure.

The small noise Justin made at seizure, God, it goes straight to your throat.

They're really common, they don't mean anything, I said. J.R. had one, you remember?

He shook his head.

Yeah, you were living in L.A. then, we might not even have told you because it wasn't a big deal. Emily knew exactly what to do. Got her right on her side, took her straight to the hospital. She knows seizures. Emily had done two tonic-clonic seizures with Justin at this point, and she was my favorite person to have with him besides Daphne. She called me one time afterwards and said Your husband had a fucking seizure again, while she was opening my fridge and getting a bottle of juice out. Iconic.

Can I go over? Justin said.

No, not until she hasn't had a fever for twenty-four hours. But Emily said you can Facetime with her tonight.

Have you seen her?

Yeah, I went and saw her at the hospital. She's okay.

How long after?

Did I see her? I said. About an hour, maybe two.

How did she seem, was she upset? Did she seem like she was in pain, or...

Okay, so. I'm going to try to keep my fucking dignity about this, but...look, this is the fucking thing about Justin, this is what you have to understand. There were three adults in that ER who love the shit out of that baby, but all of us were comforted by the fact that Jane was going to be fine. And then in fucking comes Justin, under a minute into the situation, and he's asking how she was feeling.

I don't know how the world would work without people like him.

I put my hand on the back of his neck to pull him into me and kissed his forehead. She seemed like herself, I said. She was alert. She recognized me. Not postictal. You know how kids are. They bounce back.

Justin took a shaky breath and nodded.

Are you okay? I asked.

Yeah. I just...God. Of all the fucking things to happen to her. I fucking hate seizures.

I know. You want to sit?

He shook his head, but he did lean against the wall by the bookshelf. She's so fucking little. They feel so bad, I just...God. If I did this to her...

You didn't.

But if I did--

Then you made a kid whose parents know how to deal with seizures, I said. Emily was on top of this, and Gwen would have been, and you would have been too. Fuck, even me or Evan or Derek or Daphne...you've made her an army. You did that. This could have been so much worse. Something kind of clicked together in my head, and I must have made a face or something because Justin noticed.

What?

No, it's nothing, it's like...barely related.

He tugged on my sleeve. Tell me.

It's not even about Jane, it's about you. Fucking everything comes back to him, sooner or later, and there's really no need for us to analyze that after this long, we're not going to find any new surprises. I've been all fucking torn up over you since Evan got sick and I just figured it out.

Yeah, I noticed you'd been weird.

Of course he did. What if you hadn't decided to learn to sign? I said. A lot of people don't. Or what if you had, but I hadn't, and I'd just made you read my lips forever?

Justin watched me, and I sat down on the back of the couch.

All this shit that's happened to you is rough, but it could have been so much fucking worse, I said. We always had health insurance. We always had people there to pick up the slack when I fucked up. And I just...God, all this shit has happened and we're okay. You're okay. I shrugged. I feel lucky. I don't feel lucky all that often.

Justin nodded a little.

Jane's lucky too, I said.

He kept nodding, but after a minute he said, really softly, “Is it okay if I don't feel lucky right this minute?”

Oof.

Yeah. I got up and came over to him. Yeah, that's okay. Come here.

The timer went off on the oven, but I stayed where I was, my chin on top of his head, and held him for a long time.