Z O E Y
Richard had called me to come in last minute because Linda was out with friends and wanted him to join them for drinks in town. These were friends he hadn't met yet, and that according to Linda, meant a lot to her, so Richard definitely had to go. There was no other way. I had been eating on the couch with my mom, who thought the whole thing was ridiculous, especially since usually Tristan was home and could very well take care of his brother, but eventually told me to wrap up my burrito and eat it on the bus ride there.
As it turned out, Tristan really was home, but according to Sam, he had been in bed with a headache since he had gotten home from school. Sam was also ready for bed, but more than that, he was ready to tell me all about the art club he had joined at school. So, after Richard left in a hurry, I put Sam under the covers and sat next to him to hear all about it.
It was past midnight when I realized it, and obviously, Sam was still very much up, going on and on about what Dave and he had planned for their next comic book. Richard had been very clear about respecting bedtime, and here I was, not respecting it.
"Sam," I stopped him. "As much as I'm loving hearing all about this, I can't let you go on. You have school tomorrow."
Linda hated being late. Most times she let him skip school if he overslept, which most times caused a big fight between Richard and her, sometimes so big, it made Sam cry. So no, he really couldn't go on. He had to go to sleep, and he knew it, because he took a deep breath and finally laid his head on his pillow.
I had one foot out of the door, when he said, "Love you."
I felt it in my ribs, in the corners of my eyes, in my throat, and I smiled at him, and said, "Me too." And I meant it. I really meant it.
Then Tristan came out of his bedroom next door, cursing, his hands on his face, blood dripping to the floor. I thought I imagined it, but I didn't.
"What happened?" I called, but he didn't answer, moving for the bathroom at the end of the hallway instead, still cursing, still bleeding. I didn't think much about it. I just followed him, "What's happening, Tristan?!"
The next thing I knew Sam was behind me, "He's having one of his nosebleeds. He has them a lot. Sometimes we have to take him to the hospital."
"What?" What?!
No one answered. When Tristan walked into the bathroom, I reached for the door before he could close it on my face, but he did it anyway, so hard, and so fast, my hand got caught in the middle of it. I pulled it away as fast as I could, a curse leaving my mouth before I could stop it, a sharp pain shooting through my fingers, and the fear of having just broken most of them. It didn't matter. Not right now.
"Just leave me alone! I'm fine!"
I looked back at all the blood that had dripped to the floor of the hallway, all the way from Tristan's bedroom and towards us, "You don't look fine!"
"Well, I fucking feel fine!" he said, lied. I was sure he was lying.
Sam held my hand, the one that wasn't swelling and bruising, and said, "He's always like this. He doesn't like it when â"
"Go to your fucking room, Sam!" Tristan stopped him.
"No!" Sam answered, squeezing my hand. "Dad said we should call 911 if â"
"I'm fucking fine!!"
"Is it stopping?" I asked him, trying my best not to cry, even though I couldn't move my fingers without more pain piercing through them, even though Tristan had locked himself in the bathroom to bleed out on his own. I didn't cry. I wouldn't. I asked again, "Tristan, just answer â"
"It will stop if you shut the fuck up!"
"I don't think that's how it works."
Sam pulled at my hand, "You should call â"
"No!" Tristan insisted. "Just shut up! Everyone shut up!"
We did, and for a moment, there was no sound in the whole house except for the water running inside the bathroom. Then Sam started crying next to me. I let go of his hand to get my phone from my back pocket and he leaned his head on me instead, his hiccups making it bounce back and forth. I wanted to hold him but couldn't.
Finally, Tristan said, "Just call 911."
I had it dialed already. I just had to press the button. Tell them what was happening. Tell them the address. They would get here in a matter of minutes, they said. I called Richard too. He said he would meet us at the hospital, said he was so sorry, that he should have told me this could happen, he had just hoped it wouldn't.
He hung up before he told me why exactly this was happening, and I didn't ask, because Sam was crying so much, he could barely breathe, and Tristan still wouldn't open the door, and I was sure as I had never been of anything else that something was very wrong with my hand.
When the paramedics came, they had to break the lock open. I covered Sam's eyes so he wouldn't see why, and told him again and again that his brother was going to be fine, even though his brother was passed out on the bathroom tiles, covered in his own blood, and I felt like crying and throwing up.
The paramedics let us follow them downstairs and into the ambulance and watch as they stopped the nosebleed while we drove through red light after red light. Sam kept crying in my lap, holding Tristan's hand, even after he was told not to. He stopped crying only when the nosebleed stopped, but only let go of Tristan's hand when we got to the hospital, and he was taken away on a stretcher.
Richard and Linda showed up after a while, looking like this happened a lot. Sam had fallen asleep on my lap, and I had been running my hand through his hair, but stopped when Richard told me I could go home if I wanted. He said I had done more than enough. Really, all I had done was take too long to call 911 and probably break my hand, but I didn't tell Richard this.
Instead, I said, "I'm okay. I would rather stay until we know Tristan's fine."
He didn't insist, probably because if I moved, Sam would wake up, and no one wanted him up for this. Whatever this was. I still didn't know.
"Has anyone given you an update on him yet?" he asked.
I shook my head, "No."
Richard looked around at the waiting room, "I think I'm gonna go ask then."
"And I'm gonna go get coffee," Linda said, with an apologetic smile on her lips. "I need to sober up for this."
They both disappeared. I would have loved a coffee too, but I didn't have it in me to ask, so I just went back to running my fingers through Sam's hair and ignoring the pain in my hand. Linda came back soon enough with a steaming black coffee and sat next to me in her colorful long dress, all of her necklaces clicking against each other as she did.
"You girls are hilarious these days," she started. I didn't know why, "You watch too many chick-flicks. It rots your brain."
"What?"
She looked at me, one of her trademark smiles on, "You think you can change him, don't you? Girls like you always do. But you can't change leukemia, can you? That boy's dying and there's nothing you can do about it. You should just stick to what's within your pay grade. Trust me."
"He has cancer?"
She laughed, "He's had it for years, sweetie. I met Richard when I was working at a nursing home, right? I was his parents' nurse â and this is a horrible thing to say, and I'll deny having ever said it if anyone asks â but I'm glad they both died, because that was a pretentious, just downright foul-mouthed couple. I could feel them rolling in their graves when I married their son. But what can I say? Richard wanted to make a pretty woman out of me, you know, like in the Julia Roberts movie, and I let him. Who wouldn't?"
I didn't answer. She reeked of alcohol, and I was still hearing the same words over and over again. Leukemia. Dying. Tristan had leukemia. Tristan was dying. Again and again, that was all I could think about.
Linda went on, "Anyway, turned out he had baggage. Two kids and a dead wife. Who would have guessed? Not me! And there was more! His baggage had baggage too, because, you know, Tristan's adopted. Actually, you probably didn't know that, because Richard likes to pretend it doesn't matter, so he never talks about it, but, girl, does it matter! That kid grew up in the system. He's got some demons. But that's not all! No, no, no! A few months in, and we find out he's got cancer too! At this point, I wanted to tell Richard to just give the kid back! It was just too much, right? Of course, I didn't tell him that â"
She stopped to look over at Sam, a frown on her face, "He's sleeping, right? Because he hates it when I say these things. I'm always kidding, of course, but he's sensitive!"
I opened my mouth to say maybe she just shouldn't say those things at all, but she took a sip from her coffee, her hand up in the air, as if she had more to say, a lot more, and I closed my mouth again. I wanted to just get up and leave. Take Sam with me and leave without a word. But, of course, I couldn't.
"Anyway," she started again. "Now I'm married to him, and obviously, I'm expected to fill in the shoes of his perfect dead wife, and I can't, can I? Tristan doesn't let me. He makes my life a living hell, and obviously, two can play at that game. I worked at a nursing home, remember? If I can handle horrible dying old men, I can handle a punk ass dying kid too. He wants me to be the evil stepmother, so I'll be the evil stepmother, and I'll have fun doing it too!"
She stopped to take another sip of her coffee, so I said, "You're gonna wake up Sam."
Before I could stop her, she was leaning over to slap his face the way people do when they want to wake someone up. When Sam didn't move, she said, "He's dead asleep. Don't worry. Speaking of dead, Tristan was supposed to have given up the ghost already."
"That's a horrible thing to say." I couldn't help myself.
"I know, but it's true," she said with shrug. "You have no idea how many times we've had doctors tell us to prepare for the worse. And we did, honey! We cried our tears. We grieved him. And guess what? He didn't die. At this point, it's like a sick joke, right? Even Tristan's sick of it. A few years back, he tried to finish the job himself. Richard says no, he didn't. Says it's normal for kids to try drugs, but come on, no kid tries that many drugs expecting to come out alive. He wanted out, and I don't blame him, you know? He's been through too much. I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. I'm really drunk, but you're a good listener, sweetie. That's good. Men love it when we listen. Oh, no, don't cry."
I hadn't realized I was crying. She showed me a sympathetic smile and shook her head. It just felt patronizing, "I'm just trying to help you, honey. Us, women, we have to stick together, don't we? Do you actually like him?"
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand, but more tears came out, and more, and more, and more. I couldn't hold them back. I couldn't answer her either, and so she went on, taking more sips from her coffee, shaking her head, slowly, again, and again.
"You shouldn't," she said in the end, "Nothing good can come from it."
When I finally got home, my mom was already up and getting ready for work. She hadn't realized I hadn't come home all night, and so when she asked what happened, and I started crying, by extension, so did she.
I opened my mouth to tell her everything, but she stopped me with a horrified look on her face and said we were going to the hospital. I hadn't even told her about the hospital yet, so I was confused by this, but then my mom stepped closer and grabbed my hand in hers, and I felt an intense pain shoot through my fingers, and when I looked down, there they were, swollen and bruised, and I realized I had forgotten about it. I had forgotten all about it.