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I helped him stand and gave him one of the crutches I’d rented when I’d picked up his meds. I still had to help him walk and make sure he didn’t fall on his ass, but he was getting more stable every time he used it.
I got him downstairs and sitting at the table with a bowl of soup and a sleeve of crackers. He ate in silence, and pushed the bowl aside when he was done.
“Thanks.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes glassy. His pain pills were kicking in.
Dr. Carlisle had written him a script for hydromorphone to help with his pain management. The dose was significantly higher than the ones they’d given him at the hospital, and made him a little loopy after taking it.
“You should add ginger next time.”
“Ginger?” I cleared his bowl and brought it into the kitchen.
“It goes well with chicken-based soups. Makes them more savory and adds spice without being spicy.”
“I’ll try that next time. Do you like to cook?”
“Yup. Really got into it after Eli was diagnosed.”
“Eli?”
“My little brother.”
“You mean Eliot?” I put the bowl in the dishwasher. “What diagnosis?”
“Juvenile diabetes.”
“What?” I turned to face him. “When?”
“When he was fourteen.” He rested his elbow on the table and put his cheek in his hand.
“I… I didn’t know that.”
“‘Cause our sperm donor doesn’t know.” Graham snort-laughed. “And his name is Eli. He’ll kick you in the ankles if you call him Eliot.”
“Russ doesn’t know his own son has diabetes?”
“Nope. Doesn’t know we both like dick too.” He snickered. “He’d probably take another DNA test if he did.”
“DNA test?”
“Yeah. Before he fucked off, he had us both tested. Said there was no way he could have fathered two fuck-ups and she’d lied to trap him.”
“What? You guys were kids when he left.”
“Yup. Five and three.”
Russ had called his five- and three-year-old children fuck-ups?
The meds had tended to loosen Graham’s lips, but this was the first time he’d let anything personal spill. Usually he babbled about random stuff that was more word salad than a conversation.
I should shut this down since he wasn’t in the right state of mind, but my curiosity won over my ethics and I stayed quiet.
“He said a lot of shit about us. Said I was a mistake Mom should have swallowed. Said Eli should never have been born. He tried to get Mom to get rid of both of us. Never forgave her for not doing it. Called her a slut and said she should have kept her legs closed like he wasn’t the fuckhead who knocked her up in the first place.”
“Jesus Christ.”
He snickered again. “That’s one of the nicer things he said about her. Do you know when your mom and my dad got together?”
“Yeah. I was ten.”
