I gasped for air. “I don’t have my phone.”
Silently, Alec slipped his phone out of the pocket of his sweats and handed it to me.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?” the operator answered immediately.
I hadn’t been there when my mom had found my sister passed out in the bathroom because she hadn’t eaten in days and was continuously purging. I never thought about that moment, and all the things my mom must have had to do and feel and suffer through on her own. We never talked about it, but I realized it must have felt like this. No matter what you do, there is some nagging feeling in the back of your mind that it might not be enough.
“Hello? Are you there?” the operator’s voice brought me back down to earth, the one place I didn’t want to be.
“Sorry, yes. My boyfriend, he’s unconscious. I—” I could barely breathe. There was no point in denying it, as much as every neuron in my body wanted to. There was still some sane, logical part of me that knew the longer I hesitated, the worse it was going to get. “I think he is overdosing. Has overdosed. I’m not sure.”
Alec had put a wet towel to Brooklyn’s head, whose mouth was now hanging open and his whole face going ashen, as if someone was sucking the life right out of him. I had to turn away, otherwise I might have never gotten the words I needed to get out.
“Okay, honey, paramedics are on their way.” Her voice was kind, and I swallowed my tears down. “Do you know what he’s taken?”
“I don’t,” I told her. “His nose was bleeding, and now his lips are turning blue. His whole face, it’s . . . please help.”
“Is he breathing?”
I looked wide-eyed at Alec, who shook his head.
“No,” I squeaked.
“Okay, you’re going to need to give him chest compressions. Can you lay him on his back?”
I nodded, completely unable to register the fact that she couldn’t see me. “Lay him down,” I told Alec.
As he lowered him to the bathroom floor, a deep, guttural wheezing sound came from Brooklyn’s mouth—the kind of sound you thought the monsters under your bed made.
“Oh god,” I choked the words out. I wondered if this was what drowning felt like. “Please, are they close?”
“A few minutes out,” she told me. “Are you with someone who can help?”
“Yes.”
“Have them do the chest compressions while you’re on the phone with me. They should be hard and fast but allow the chest to rise completely in between compressions. I can count them for you.”
I counted while she counted, and Alec pushed down on Brooklyn’s chest with his palms in time with the counting. Brooklyn made another one of those guttural wheezing sounds, like he was begging us to keep him alive.
You never think this kind of thing could happen to you. That’s why nobody’s ever really prepared. Who everreallyassumes the worst? Nobody, until the worst happens.
I’d blacked out by the time the paramedics arrived, and things only started coming back to me in flashes as I drove with Stella and Alec to the hospital. I remembered Brooklyn’s father lifting me up off the floor (but not how I ended up on the floor), I remembered seeing the table in the living room of the suite moved all the way to the wall by the television, and I remembered getting defensive with a police officer who showed up, as if somehow, nobody had done anything wrong. That wasn’t true, but I must have thought that it was.
I’d curled myself up into a ball in the back seat of Stella’s car, watching the flashing of passing streetlights with bleary eyes. I didn’t realize we’d even gotten to the hospital until I’d somewhat come to my senses in the cushy chair of the emergency room lobby. It was almost 2 a.m., and we seemed to be the only people in the area with any kind of emergency, our various stages of distress and disarray only on display for each other.
Stella’s updo had fallen out, and streaks of makeup still decorated her face. I was in my pajama shorts and one of Brooklyn’s hoodies. Alec’s shirt was on inside out. Brooklyn’s parents had managed to get somewhat dressed, but the worse for wear showed the most on their faces.
We all sat in unbearable silence, because what could any of us have said that would have mattered? It felt like an eternity before a nurse came out from behind the stark-white swinging double doors.
“All right, I can only take family back to see him right now.”
“Are you serious?” Stella snapped with a kind of viciousness that came from somewhere deep and hurting.
Charlie put a hand to Stella’s forearm. “It’s okay.”
Stella squeaked out a sob as she clung to her father, dotting his gray T-shirt with wet spots. Then Annie looked back at me and Alec with tired eyes before following them back.
For the short period of time I’d known Alec, he hadn’t been very emotive—almost robotic in nature (as those kinds of engineering people were). But when I glanced over at him, he seemed like a completely different person than the one I’d come to know. His whole face was red and puffy, his eyes were bloodshot, and he seemed younger somehow. Someone too young to take on these kinds of burdens.
