by Ella James
“What the hell is—”
“Sir, when someone has got a fever this high, we give them some medicine to relax them and help stop their shaking. Mr.—”
“Smith,” I supply.
My pulse spikes up as Luke’s eyes roll back in his head.
“It’ll just relax him. Not a bad thing.”
But it doesn’t. His eyes open a few seconds later. They jump all around the room until he settles on me. He groans, “Vance?”
“I’m right here. See.”
I touch his calf, covered by blankets.
His mouth presses flat, which makes him wince because of his raw lips.
“He needs chapstick,” I say as another nurse steps in. A moment later, one of them steps by me on their way out of the space and drops a small tube into my hand.
“Thank you.”
I move up by his head and twist the cap of the chapstick off. It’s really more like Vaseline. I put some on my finger, hesitating just a second before touching his lips.
His eyes slit open.
“It’s okay.” I brush my lips over his hair. When I realize what I just did, I feel almost faint with alarm. I’m crouched by his head. I stand slowly up.
His arm reaches toward me. “Vance.”
He’s only happy when I’m down right by him. All his shaking’s stopped, and he does seem more sedated. Still, every minute or two, he’ll open his eyes and look around for me.
“You’re okay.”
“Hold my hand.” It’s a low groan.
Something touches my shoulder. I blink at a woman in a white coat. “Mr. Smith. We’re taking your brother to CT now. You can wait here.”
I wait in a chair outside the curtained area for more than an hour, getting more pissed off each second. Finally, a nurse comes.
“Where’s Luke?”
“We’ve moved him. He’s stable,” she starts. “He got upset during CT—wanting you…is what I think was going on there. We gave more sedation and he’s sleeping now in ICU.”
My heart flips. “ICU?”
“Did no one tell you? He’s septic—with pneumonia. Has he had the flu?”
“Last week.”
She leads me through two sets of doors, into a vast room full of curtained areas and beeping. My heart kicks into my throat at the smell: alcohol and plastic. Like when Mom died.
I don’t like the ICU. I like it so much less when I’m led into his small room, and he’s laid out on a hospital bed, crisscrossed with wires and tubing and unclothed except a sheet that covers his hips. A blonde nurse sits on a stool beside him. A male one is doing something to the IV tower. Luke’s arms are laid at his sides, his palms turned up so I can see the tubes and tape and mottled bruising on the inside of his wrists and elbows. Machines tower over the bed. I notice a bigger mask over his mouth and nose, a bandage taped to his throat. What, did he get bitten by a vampire?
I stand by him, looking down. I feel like I might get sick.
“Luke?” I say it quietly, so that no one else can really hear me.
When he doesn’t answer, I reach down and touch his hair.
“We gave him a lot of sedation. He’s a fighter, and he wasn’t happy with that CVC at all.”
Something rumbles behind me, and I turn to see the dude nurse has pushed up a seat beside the bed rail. “The CVC is his line.” He gestures to the vampire bite. “It’s under that bandage on his neck—or would have been, if we’d been able to get it in there.”
All of that is Greek to me. My eyes feel achy. I grit my teeth, and the blonde nurse hands me a tissue just as my eyes start to leak.
“He’s doing really well actually.” She nods at him. “This is just BiPAP—the mask. And he’s doing very well on it. If he can stay stable for twelve hours, we may even bump him out into a floor room.”
27
Vance
He comes awake sometimes, and he seems scared and upset. When he shivers, they won’t cover him up, because his fever is still high. The antibiotics haven’t kicked in fully. Once, he tries to reach for me. The nurses hold him down, acting like the act of him wanting to touch me means he must be near hallucinating.
That I can only hold his hand—can’t stroke his face or rub his neck or kiss him—makes me feel like I might suffocate or scream at someone. Finally, I think around the time it’s getting to be morning, I’m told they’ll remove the biPAP mask soon.
“His lungs are looking very good,” a short, freckled doctor tells me. “We did biPAP as a precaution, and I think we made the right call in avoiding full-on ventilation. I don’t think he’s headed toward mechanical ventilation. The worst are his kidneys, but I think they’re perking up. You’ll get moved to the floor later this evening if all remains well, and they can turn the biPAP off.” The doctor pauses before leaving. “Your brother is my favorite author. When he’s lucid, tell him one of his caretakers was a big fan.”
I smile and nod and try to breathe. At some point, I go shower, and Luke’s eyes are open when I get back. He looks so fucking sad. He stares at me, and I hope that it’s the drugs they’re giving him that make him seem so lifeless. Maybe he’s upset to have me here. I check my phone, hoping for a text from Pearl, but there is nothing. I’m surprised they let me back here. I’m surprised his mom hasn’t shown up.
All that day, they wean the biPAP mask down, so by evening, someone pulls it off and puts on oxygen tubing. A little later, someone comes to roll his bed into another room. I walk along beside him. His hand reaches toward mine. I don’t want to take it. Not until we’re safely in his room.
Then we’re there, and his eyes are closed again. He’s murmuring nonsense. A nurse tells me it’s because they weaned him off some heavy sedatives. He seems upset. The only thing that helps is when I stroke the inside of his arm. But I can’t do that when the nurses are around—and they’re always around.
It goes on like that for a whole other fucking day. At least his fever’s down, so I can cover him with blankets they brought when I complained about the rough ones. These are fleecy. I tuck them up to his chin. I hold his hand and try to do a good job rubbing all along his palm and wrist.
One time, when I’m doing that, he opens his eyes and gives me a lost-eyed look. “I love you.” He smiles weakly and sinks right back into sleep.
I feel like I’m being stretched apart…in pieces. There’s the part of me that fucking loves him, too. My stupid heart swells up and bleeds for him because I’m stupid, and he’s Luke, and being near Luke makes me dumb. Another part of me that has more sense knows being here with him is really bad. Twice, I’ve been told that his mom is coming. Twice, I’ve been updated that she’s been delayed. Every second I’m beside him, I know someone else might show up—someone who’s real family and will tell the staff I’m not his brother. I should leave, I think at times—protect myself and him from suspicion of his family does come—but…I just can’t.
I get better at timing when the nurses will be in. The third day, he seems no more wakeful, but I’m asked to leave the room so they can take his catheter out. After that, he has to get up and walk to the bathroom. Twice, the nurses help him. He can barely move, he’s so weak. When he gets back into the bed, they cover him back up and put his oxygen tubing back on. He falls right back to sleep.
Luke McDowell. His name in the nurse’s voices haunts my fragmented sleep. It’s the fourth morning, and I wake up to his eyes on me. His hand’s on my head. I guess I fell asleep with my face on the mattress by his legs.
“Hi.” He looks so sleepy, sort of dazed, so I can’t read his face.
I swallow. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay.” He can’t even move his mouth. His eyes shut, and he’s back asleep in seconds.
I feel like I’m on pause in a movie.
Pearl texts later that day. Thanks for staying with him. She’ll be home soon. So she knows.
Time in his room passes at a glacial pace. Everything about him siren calls me. Even his bare shoulde
rs and his unwashed hair and bruised up arms beg for my fingers.
If he was mine, I would let the rail down and lie there beside him. I would hold him up against me so he wouldn’t feel so lost.
He’s not yours. He never will be, fucknut.
Something’s wrong with me for being here at all.
“If you hadn’t found him when you did, I think the outcome might be a lot different.”
A nurse told me that. So maybe that’s why. Maybe all this happened so he didn’t die. I don’t want him to die. I’m okay if that’s what this amounts to.
Then I’m in the shower, and my chest is such a den of agony, I wonder if a nurse would notice if I scream.
It’s evening the fourth night. I stand by the bed and play with his hair for a little while. It’s not nurse time, but if someone walks in, I’ll just move my hand and act like I was headed to the nurse’s station to get coffee.
The door opens. I jerk my hand away from his hair and turn to face them with a neutral face.
It’s Pearl.
PEARL
I know that I’m right the second that I see him. PL’s in the bed asleep, and Vance is standing by him, but he jumps a mile when I come in the door.
I give him a kind smile. “Hi, Vance.”
I step over closer, and Luke’s eyes crack open.
“Hi—” I start, but his eyes slip shut. I check out his face. He looks frailer. His short hair is pushed back off his forehead, and his lips look slightly chapped. “Poor Luke. He looks like he’s been through it.” My eyes move over Vance. “You too.” He looks almost worse than PL—all vampire pale with raccoon circles around his eyes.
“How is he? And how are you?” I rub my lips together, trying not to cry at how un-Vance he seems—so tired and somber.
“It’s okay.” He puts a hand over his forehead, gets a deep breath. He rubs his pale-looking lips together. “He’s just been asleep…you know. He was in a lot of pain—” his voice cracks on that word— “when we first came. So it’s a good thing I guess. That he’s sleeping.” He swallows. “They’re gonna check his lungs out in a little while. Try to get rid of the oxygen.”
I already know all this. I’m Luke’s designated health care proxy. I have been since last year, when Mrs. McDowell became too immobile to do it. After me, it’s Arman. He’s a pediatric dentist, but he and Luke get along well, and Luke likes the way he thinks. It makes extra sense, because if Luke and I are traveling and we both got hurt, Arman could just come make decisions for the both of us.
I’ve been talking to the doctors since Vance brought Luke to the ER. When they asked me about Luke’s half brother, Vance Smith, I backed it up.
Over the last forty-eight hours, while I tried to get back home from Spain, I’ve only called twice, so I knew PL was out of ICU, but not much more.
“That’s really good.”
Vance’s face looks so much thinner. He’s all eyes, as if he’s watching me and waiting for the moment that I’ll ask him: “Why are you here?”
I step over by the bed. I want to touch PL, but also, “I don’t want to disturb him.”
Luke’s eyes lift back open. His face is so pale, by far paler than I’ve ever seen him. He looks like he’s lost fifteen or twenty pounds.
He stares at me—he looks grumpy—and I give him a little smile. “Hi, friend.”
His gaze moves behind me. He’s looking for Vance—and Vance must know that PL wants him near, because he comes in closer, leans down a little, and murmurs, “Hey there, man.”
Luke looks at him like he thinks that Vance will tell him something with his eyes.
“You’re okay,” Vance says quietly. “We’re all just chilling.”
Luke’s mouth twitches—the sad echo of a smile—and his eyelids shut. When Vance looks back at me, he looks visibly nervous.
“I’m so sorry, Vance. That you came over and you had to find him that way. He told me before I left for Spain that he was feeling a lot better. Just taking some time off to see his mom and do some other things. He had gotten sick on the trip. Couldn’t sleep. You might know how he is since you’re his friend.”
When I say that, Vance’s eyes well up with tears. His face seems frozen—like he knows that if he so much as breathes, the tears will fall and never stop.
“Vance.” I wave him closer to the door, away from the bed. We stand partially behind a recliner, and he works his jaw. “I know you said you were his brother. You’re not his brother. But you’re something.”
He looks at the floor. He inhales deeply, shuts his eyes. “It doesn’t matter, Pearl.” His voice is ragged.
Up close to him like this, I notice he hasn’t shaved. He smells like he could use a shower. He looks down at his shoes. When he looks back up at me, his eyes are haunted.
“Sorry.” He swallows and tries to smile, his eyebrows lifting in a vain effort to sell me. “I just need to step in the men’s room. Had to for a while.”
When he comes out a minute later, he looks gathered.
A nurse comes in. “Just a vitals check.”
I give Vance’s shirt a light tug. “Let’s step outside.”
When we get out into the hall, he looks back down. He’s doing the clenched jaw thing again. His eyes are on our feet. He won’t look up at me.
“Vance? Are you okay?”
His eyes swing up to meet mine. Bloodshot. “Just tired.”
“I want to tell you some things. About Luke,” I whisper. “Is that okay?”
I look around. The hall seems empty. Vance shrugs with one shoulder, and I step in just a little closer, so I’m able to be heard while keeping my voice low.
“Luke hired me in January 2015. He had just gotten the big job. He did so well with it. I think he just…rose up. The church was growing fast. His podcasts and his books already had an audience. The position elevated him, though. And I felt like he elevated Evermore. He worked like a machine that the whole year. We both did.
“The church picked up so many members that year. I think like 7,000. Luke spent so much time on every sermon. Sometimes he’d spend weeks on one. I was new to San Francisco. Lonely and clueless. I don’t think from anybody’s effort per se, but we became good friends. Sort of like a brother-sister quality.”
Vance’s eyes move from my face back to the floor, and I blow out a quiet breath.
“Luke’s one of my best friends.” I wipe my eyes, thinking about how I wasn’t here for him this last week. “In 2016,” I press onward, “he was different. But I didn’t get it. Didn’t notice,” I say. “I thought he was just busy. He was busy. In 2017, I realized we didn’t talk as much as we used to. But he was really busy.” I wipe my eyes as some tears spill out. “I was busy, too. I met my husband that year. Arman. I got kind of wrapped up in all that good stuff.”
Vance nods.
“So anyway, I didn’t really notice in a real way until winter. Of 2017.” Tears flow down my cheeks as I try not to lose it in the hall. “So…Luke started missing work sometimes. I was the only one who noticed on a lot of the days. Because it’s me that keeps his schedule. Or did mostly then.” I wipe my face. “So anyway. He said all this stuff to me. Excuses. And then in early ’18…he was home for like…three days. And I kept calling. He would put me off. I went by with some soup.” More tears fall. I wipe them. Vance’s eyes are rapt now, his face sympathetic.
“He was on the floor beside the fireplace. The fire had gone out, and…he wasn’t wearing a shirt. I thought he was hurt. Like he had fallen. He got up fast once he realized I was there. But he was really…off. He assured me he was okay, just sick. But the next night, he called,” I whisper, “having a panic attack. I was nearby, so I just came over. I got him a glass of wine and that helped. But he wouldn’t talk to me.” I swallow again, steadying my voice. “Ever since then, Vance, he just…misses sometimes. I go over and he acts okay, and he comes back to work the next day.” I let out a long breath that I didn’t even realize I was holding. I’ve worried s
o much for poor PL the last year. It’s too hard to explain to Vance in this one conversation.
“When you came, though…he’s been different.” My throat aches, so I can’t speak above a whisper. “I see him smiling. His face— I didn’t even know, but he just always looked so tense and tired. He looks relaxed since you got here.”
Vance looks anything but. Now he’s standing up a little straighter. His jaw’s locked, his nostrils flaring. “Vance. I love Luke. I’d keep any secret of his…” Vance’s face takes on a look of panic. I can’t help it—I’m a hugger. He seems like a hugger, too—so I step in and wrap my arms around him. “I’m not asking. Okay?”
I hug him a little tighter. He locks onto me. For forever, he just hugs me really tight, with his chin on the top of my head. When he pulls away, his eyes are teary.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
He nods once. I can tell he doesn’t want to do this. Doesn’t want to talk about it with me.
I nod, too. I don’t know what to say or how to bridge the chasm between us. I don’t really know Vance well, although I wish I did.
“Thank you,” he says, soft and formal. He gives me a polite smile.
“Thank you for being so good to PL.”
28
Vance
The next hour is like something out of a bad movie. Pearl says hi to Luke again, but bows out tactfully when his eyes lock onto me like he’s trying to communicate via ESP. After she’s gone, it’s just us in the room. Luke looks at me for a long time—just this neutral, sort of chilled, calm look I can’t interpret.
He holds his hand out for mine, and when I take it, his eyes shut. He breathes in deeply…exhales slowly. His hand grips mine—just a little—and he raises his free hand to his nose, where the oxygen tubing still sits.
“Vance Rayne.” He says my name like he’s trying it on for size. “I feel sort of…floaty. Like I’m halfway high.” His eyes open. They do look kind of high. He’s still getting midazolam in an IV bag. But he looks more lucid than he has since we got here. “Every time I wake up…when I see you…” His voice cracks. He drags another breath in and closes his eyes. “That’s the good part.”
