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But they didn’t.
Once all was quiet, I darted over to the scrubs supply. “What size are you?” I whispered, looking him up and down.
“I’m not leaving,” he said. “We don’t even know what’s happening with my mom.”
But just as he said it, his phone dinged.
A message from Hank. Guess he had his number now.
Can’t find you. Mom’s OK. They think she’s dehydrated. Possible vertigo. Getting fluids now. Much better. Staying the night for observation. Go home.
Jack held it out for me to read.
“Ah.”
He let out a deep sigh and closed his eyes for a minute. “Guess we’re going home after all.”
“You know,” I said, expecting the usual brick wall. “It really might help me to know what’s going on with you two.”
But this time Jack met my eyes. “Hank hates me because I’m not Drew. Because Drew died and I lived.”
“That’s it?” I asked.
“That’s enough of it.”
I felt like an anthropologist. Was this how sharing worked? Had I earned some sharing from him by offering sharing of my own? Anyway, I nodded, like Go on.
To my surprise, he did. “I was the dumb one in the family, by the way. Drew and Hank were the smart ones, so they’d hang out and be smart together. I was the one with ADD and dyslexia and dysgraphia, too. The whole package.”
“None of that makes you dumb.”
“To me, it did. And my teachers, too. So I did the class clown thing. Hank and Drew were total Eagle Scouts with straight As. And I… was not.”
“That’s the deal with you and Hank?”
Jack sighed. “I was always kind of on the outs. Hank stayed here and became the ranch manager. Drew went to vet school here and went into practice with my dad. I was the only one who left. I was closest to Drew, for sure, because I always made him laugh. And he could always see that I was good at different things. He was kind of my buffer zone for the family. But after he died… there was no one to be that anymore.”
I nodded. “He was important to you.”
“I don’t know how to be in this family without him.”
That did not feel like the whole story.
But it was a start.
And then, realizing something positive, I said, “Hey! You drove over a bridge tonight! Without stopping to throw up.”
This was not news to Jack. “Yes.”
“That’s progress, right?”
Jack tilted his head. “Without stopping to throw up right away. I threw up later. In the ER bathroom.”
Ah. I took in the sight of him, just standing there being handsome. It’s so easy to think that other people have it easy. “Still though,” I lifted my fist, like Yay. “A time delay. That’s progress.”
I tossed him the scrubs and a little surgical hat, and then—while he was changing and I was deliberately, specifically not looking—I scanned the shelves for anything else that might help obscure his identity. I found a box of those disposable dark glasses they give you after they dilate your eyes and turned to hold a pair out, like These?
But my timing couldn’t have been worse. He was just peeling off his T-shirt and I got an accidental eyeful of his naked torso.
