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I smile and nod and try to breathe. At some point, I go shower, and Luke’s eyes are open when I get back. He looks so fucking sad. He stares at me, and I hope that it’s the drugs they’re giving him that make him seem so lifeless. Maybe he’s upset to have me here. I check my phone, hoping for a text from Pearl, but there is nothing. I’m surprised they let me back here. I’m surprised his mom hasn’t shown up.
All that day, they wean the biPAP mask down, so by evening, someone pulls it off and puts on oxygen tubing. A little later, someone comes to roll his bed into another room. I walk along beside him. His hand reaches toward mine. I don’t want to take it. Not until we’re safely in his room.
Then we’re there, and his eyes are closed again. He’s murmuring nonsense. A nurse tells me it’s because they weaned him off some heavy sedatives. He seems upset. The only thing that helps is when I stroke the inside of his arm. But I can’t do that when the nurses are around—and they’re always around.
It goes on like that for a whole other fucking day. At least his fever’s down, so I can cover him with blankets they brought when I complained about the rough ones. These are fleecy. I tuck them up to his chin. I hold his hand and try to do a good job rubbing all along his palm and wrist.
One time, when I’m doing that, he opens his eyes and gives me a lost-eyed look. “I love you.” He smiles weakly and sinks right back into sleep.
I feel like I’m being stretched apart…in pieces. There’s the part of me that fucking loves him, too. My stupid heart swells up and bleeds for him because I’m stupid, and he’s Luke, and being near Luke makes me dumb. Another part of me that has more sense knows being here with him is really bad. Twice, I’ve been told that his mom is coming. Twice, I’ve been updated that she’s been delayed. Every second I’m beside him, I know someone else might show up—someone who’s real family and will tell the staff I’m not his brother. I should leave, I think at times—protect myself and him from suspicion of his family does come—but…I just can’t.
I get better at timing when the nurses will be in. The third day, he seems no more wakeful, but I’m asked to leave the room so they can take his catheter out. After that, he has to get up and walk to the bathroom. Twice, the nurses help him. He can barely move, he’s so weak. When he gets back into the bed, they cover him back up and put his oxygen tubing back on. He falls right back to sleep.
Luke McDowell. His name in the nurse’s voices haunts my fragmented sleep. It’s the fourth morning, and I wake up to his eyes on me. His hand’s on my head. I guess I fell asleep with my face on the mattress by his legs.
“Hi.” He looks so sleepy, sort of dazed, so I can’t read his face.
I swallow. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” He can’t even move his mouth. His eyes shut, and he’s back asleep in seconds.
I feel like I’m on pause in a movie.
Pearl texts later that day. Thanks for staying with him. She’ll be home soon. So she knows.
Time in his room passes at a glacial pace. Everything about him siren calls me. Even his bare shoulders and his unwashed hair and bruised up arms beg for my fingers.
If he was mine, I would let the rail down and lie there beside him. I would hold him up against me so he wouldn’t feel so lost.
He’s not yours. He never will be, fucknut.
Something’s wrong with me for being here at all.
“If you hadn’t found him when you did, I think the outcome might be a lot different.”
A nurse told me that. So maybe that’s why. Maybe all this happened so he didn’t die. I don’t want him to die. I’m okay if that’s what this amounts to.
Then I’m in the shower, and my chest is such a den of agony, I wonder if a nurse would notice if I scream.
It’s evening the fourth night. I stand by the bed and play with his hair for a little while. It’s not nurse time, but if someone walks in, I’ll just move my hand and act like I was headed to the nurse’s station to get coffee.
The door opens. I jerk my hand away from his hair and turn to face them with a neutral face.
It’s Pearl.* * *PEARLI know that I’m right the second that I see him. PL’s in the bed asleep, and Vance is standing by him, but he jumps a mile when I come in the door.
