“So you’re family.”
It’s the same roundabout language Uncle Bill uses: Hunger makes family of all of us, biological or otherwise. I hate this dance, the euphemisms. If I have to beg, I’d rather do it honestly, knees ground into the dirt, the ticking clock of my body exposed for the vultures.
But I don’t get to choose how I do it. I’ve lost control. Of this, of my mom, of my thoughts that keep swirling back to the disappointment in Veer’s eyes as she walked away.
“Yeah,” I say. “Family.”
“Well.” He pops the last syllable, adding a “p” where there isn’t one. “I haven’t heard from him. And you shouldn’t go through his stuff. Never know what you might find.” There’s a note of warning to that last bit.
“I didn’t—” I stop myself, try to refocus. “I don’t know when he’ll be back, and his freezer’s empty.”
I thought Brian might know what that means. But his “Okay” tells me he doesn’t.
“Blood,” I say, voice hushed, tasting salt and resentment because now that I’m saying it out loud to this stranger, I understand why Uncle Bill keeps the word in the crook of his elbow but not on his tongue. Saying it out loud feels shameful, no matter how many times you smell it, no matter how many times you thrust it into your veins. “We’re running low, and if he doesn’t come back soon…”
“How low?”
I think of the vials smashed across our floor, of my mom’s blackened tongue, of the nearly full sharps container. “A couple days.”
He swears. The wind howls in the background, staticky and muffled. I find myself staring out of the hospital room window into the concrete wall outside.No Parking, it demands in blocky white letters. They’ll be wondering where I am at the triage desk.
Brian coughs. “You got a car?”
“Yeah.”
“Come up this week. I’ll text you the coordinates.”
Relief floods my lungs. He’s willing to help. Ten, twenty, a hundred small failures brought me here, but I’ve staved off adding one more.
“Where—” I start, but he’s already hung up.
I stand there, looking out the window into a concrete void, and without warning all my limbs turn to lead weights. I slide into the room’s single pea-colored vinyl chair and wrap my arms around myself.
“This is good,” I whisper. “It’s going to be okay.”
It’s the kind of thing I say to my mom when she’s upset. Phrases that don’t really mean anything, but I’ve been saying them so long that I’m not sure I know how to do anything else.
I breathe in, parse the smells of floor polish and Windex, of papery hospital gowns and strangers’ fingerprints left on the TV remote. The hospital air’s familiar funk of body fluids and exhaustion, of people stretched thin and wrung out. It really is going to be okay. I’ve bought us time, and a few more days of hoping that Uncle Bill comes back.
If he doesn’t, it proves all my mom’s fears right, the ones whispering that everyone leaves her, that I’m the only one who won’t, and not even because I don’t want to, but because I owe her. Will I have to be the one to break it to her that he’s gone for good?
The Nokia buzzes, reminding me it’s still in my hand. Brian’s texted coordinates. I plug them into my phone, find he’s way out in the northern Nevada desert. For a second, I taste exhaust and shadow and tumbleweed.
I’ll text when I’m on the way, I reply.
Then, belatedly,Thank you.
The phone buzzes.You’re welcome. Bill is a good guy. I’m sure he’ll be back soon.
That, too, feels like a lie.
11
AFTER WORK, IN THE SECRECY OF MY BEDROOM, I SITcross-legged on the comforter and dial the customer service number for the UNLV medical center. It’s the only way I can think of to reach Uncle Bill’s work. Maybe he called in sick. Maybe they know something.
“For English, please press 1,” the automated voice croons. I press 1.
I’ve slept in the same twin bed for sixteen years. Blue sheets, blue pillows, blue paisley bedspread, swirls of light blue and dark blue and somewhere-in-the-middle blue the same color as the crisscross of blue veins on the backs of my hands. I start to wonder what Veer would think of it, then cut that thought off before it’s finished. It doesn’t matter. It’s not a good idea.
