Page 64 of My Family

“I understand completely,” she says.

I’m startled because she isn’t judging me. She’s smiling and nodding. I look into her eyes to see if she’s lying, but she isn’t. She just looks very, very tired. There are deep dark circles under her eyes as she pushes her pink glasses up her nose.

Deep down, I always expect people to have a very negative reaction to my story. The truth is I’m ashamed of it. Ashamed of where I’d ended up. Ashamed my parents put me there and I couldn’t do anything to change it.

“Everyone told me it wasn’t going to work with my husband. He works in the maritime industry, he’s always away. They said, ‘How are you going to juggle medicine, your kids, and someone who’s never home?’ But I didn’t want to hear it. He’s my safe harbor. He’s everything to me, and I wouldn’t trade our life for anything. Of course I’ve given things up. I couldn’t do the master’s program I wanted in Florida.” She pauses. “Yes, it was in Florida specifically to be near Disney,” she says with a small smile, and we both laugh. “But that’s adult life. It’s making choices. And I chose him and my family. I’d choose it again, no matter what I had to give up.”

“Thank you for saying that,” I manage, trying to keep it together. The truth is I don’t know what to say.

“Of course, sweetheart,” she says.

Not everyone at the hospital is like that, obviously. There are difficult people too. Two nurses who answer in monosyllables, explain nothing, and roll their eyes whenever I ask for help, like I’m the stupidest person alive. And an older, heavyset doctor who comes around to correct me constantly with that air of supreme superiority.

“My God, you couldn’t find the patient’s vein in bed thirteen and now he’s bruised like this? We’re going to get sued. Did you fill in the charts correctly? I don’t think so. This isn’t some little hobby, you know.”

But honestly, those people are so far from being a real problem that most of the time I just ignore them. Which makes them even angrier. They want me to engage. But whenever they tell me to do something, I do it without opening my mouth, and when the nurses won’t help me, I find Nouha or Clarice or whoever else is around with some patience. I’ve dealt with worse things my whole life. They don’t make a dent.

No matter what happens there, it’s an escape from everything happening at Aspire.

At Aspire, things are not good.

Liam and I are spending less and less time together, and on top of that, my brother isn’t doing well at all. Every time I get back, Griff has an update, until the worst one comes: “Tyler is in the infirmary, and if he doesn’t improve, they won’t be able to keep him here. They’ll have to move him somewhere with a more intensive detox program.”

I don’t know where they’d send him, but I wouldn’t be there to help. That stays in my head the entire time I’m at the hospital.

When I get back from the day shift, I don’t go to my room, even knowing Liam will be waiting. I feel like a terrible person. But Tyler needs me too, so I don’t even stop to let Liam know I’m not coming back for the night. I go straight to the infirmary.

Tyler is lying on the cot in pain, eyes closed, skin yellowed. Glenn is nearby, along with another facility nurse named Hernandes. Both of them look worried.

“He’s not doing well at all, is he?” I say, pulling a chair up beside him. A regular resident probably couldn’t stay, but being a leader comes with certain privileges.

I stay beside him all night. I doze off a few times, but every time I do, I dream he has died, and I wake up to make sure he’s still there, still breathing. In the morning I have another shift, so I take a quick shower and the transport picks me up at six.

I take one patient’s blood pressure three times before I get a clean reading. Then I’m halfway to the wrong room with the wrong medication. Nouha had prescribed one medication. There’s another with a nearly identical name, and the charge nurse stops me in the corridor.

“What are you doing, Ethan?”

I look at the label. My stomach drops.

“Wrong room,” I say.

She takes it from me without a word. I stand there for a second, then go wash my face in the staff bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. A mistake like that could hurt someone. I know that. I can’t function like this.

Nouha catches me in the hallway near the end of the shift. She doesn’t say anything, just looks at me, and I know I’m not hiding it well. She’s a lot like Griff in that way: she notices everything about everyone, she loves what she does no matter how hard it gets, and she tries to help in whatever way she can.

“What’s going on, Ethan?”

I’m going to say nothing. But I know I can’t hide it. That could be the difference between a patient living or dying, and these people are my responsibility. I have to be honest even if there are consequences for me.

“My brother isn’t doing well,” I say. “He’s in the infirmary back at the Academy and he’s off drugs, going through withdrawal. I don’t know if he’ll be able to stay where he is, and if he can’t, they’ll send him somewhere I won’t be able to reach.”

“Sweetheart,” she says, and hugs me. She’s short, so she wraps her arms around my waist. “I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, and the desperation in my voice surprises me. I’ve been doing this more lately. Saying what I actually feel instead of swallowing it. It’s still new.

“What if he came here for treatment?” she asks. “We have an excellent government-funded program for people coming off drugs. I could get him a spot. After all, he’s not serving time for anything dangerous at Aspire, right?”

My mouth falls open.