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Ethan
I’m standing at the edge of the road in an orange vest, turning that littleSlow - Stopsign around and around and waiting for Roy to call and tell me I’m fired. Last night, when I finally fell into bed, I dreamed about water up my nose and the way that man caught his lip in his teeth when he stared at me. Then dream-Victor grabbed my head and forced it under the hazy, ash-flecked water of Lake Chelan, holding it there as I struggled. I woke up, coughing and gasping, to find Petunia draped across my face.
My phone rings, and I feel dizzy. Why did Roy wait so long? But when I pick up, I hear Peyton’s dry, effortlessly cool voice. She plays competitive soccer and first chair violin and gets approximately fifteen phone numbers every time we go to a bar. I have no idea why she still hangs out with me.
“My guy. When is June’s appointment?”
I adjust my sunglasses, staring down the dude in the lead car who is getting more and more pissed off that I haven’t given him the signal to go. “One o’clock. Why?”
“My lunch break starts at twelve-thirty. I’ll meet you there.” As if she couldn’t get any more accomplished, she’s also an emergency room nurse.
“It’s just routine,” I lie. Mom’s getting worse—crying uncontrollably for no reason, waking up in the night to take apart the puzzles she works on during the day. I want to break down and tell someone, anyone, if there’s a chance they can help me. But I’m too scared that they’ll take her away. It feels like ninety percent of the words that come out of my mouth now are lies.
“See you there.”
I flip my sign and offer a wave as the angry driver roars off with his middle finger in the air. “Thank you.”
Peyton and I met when we brought Mom to Peyton’s ER after Danny’s accident. They took her away for a scan and I sat shivering and alone in the waiting room in dirty clothes, still traumatized from nearly drowning myself. Something warm tapped my arm and I looked up to see a dark-haired nurse with green eyes holding out a cup of coffee. The edges of our broken parts just happened to fit together, slide into place in a way we both needed, and she became part of my family.
Getting to UW’s Memory and Brain Clinic should take twenty minutes, but as usual in Seattle, traffic and a squall make it fifty. Rain soaks my clothes as I run between the parking garage and the front doors. In the hushed waiting room, full of people double my mom’s age, Peyton waves me over. “They just took her back. Ana’s with her.”
This is the first time I’ve missed hugging Mom before one of her appointments, from her first diagnosis until today. “Fucking traffic. This is bullshit.” I can’t help but blame myself; my mind has been all over the place in the last twenty-four hours.
Peyton frowns at me. “You ok?”
“I’m fine.” I grab a random magazine and start flipping through it. It’s full of celebrity red carpet pics, which just skyrockets my stress. Peyton pulls it away, pages crumpling.
“I thought you said this was routine.”
There’s no world in which I can school my expression quickly enough to fool her. Her shoulders sag. “Ethan…”
“Please, Peyton.” My voice cracks a little. “Can we just wait and see what they say?”
“What are you imagining? ‘Congrats, she’s on the mend’?” Her tone is sharp, sad. “It’s never going to be that, Ethan.”
I stare at my hands, resting palm-up in my lap.
Finally, she sighs. “I’m sorry; that was uncalled for. I justhateseeing you do this to yourself.”
“Doing what?”
“Thinking it’s your job to control something that doesn’t play fair, doesn’t have any rules. There’s nothing we can do but be there for her.”
“There’s always something. I just haven’t found it yet.”
She grabs my hand, pulls me to my feet. “Come here.”
“Wait—”
“We’ll only be a minute.”
We follow the blue plastic signs through the clinic into the hushed, sun-drenched lobby of the main hospital. Peyton power walks everywhere with her soccer-player quads, so I focus on keeping up as she takes the steps to the second floor two at a time. The nurse’s station is empty; no one stops us from sneaking down one of the long hallways flanked with patient rooms.
Peyton stops at room 242. The door’s open, lights off, bed unmade. She hesitates, a strange look on her face, then goes in and sits on the edge of the bed.
“What is this?”
She studies the heart monitors and IV stand, the snarls of cables and sensors. “This is where my dad died.”
