by Aiden Bates
“Well. Doing well,” I answered. “I hope you are, too.”
Rather than replying, Callahan said nothing after my pre-scripted, canned answer. Awkwardly, he didn’t respond at all except for a low, almost inaudible little hum of amusement.
With nothing else to respond to except the strange silence from the other end of the call, I tried to prompt him as neutrally as I could.
“Can I help you?”
“Oh, well, on the contrary,” Callahan said breezily, as though we’d been casually chatting the whole time. “I was wondering how I could help you. It’s been a while since we’ve heard from you. I was just calling to check in. I got a little worried that maybe your last appointment had been less than satisfactory.”
“Oh. Ha. No,” I said a little more emphatically than I meant to. My only appointments were ever with Mitch, and my last appointment was with Mitch before he quit. Therefore, no, Callahan, there was no reason to worry. My last appointment had been very satisfactory. Literally life-changing, actually.
I cradled the phone between my head and my shoulder as I got up to start packing my things into my work bag, preparing to leave for the day.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I said, shutting down my laptop as the clock switched from four fifty-nine to five on the dot. “Everything was fine, thank you. I’ve just gotten busy at work. It will probably be a while before I call to put anything else on the books, to be honest.” Of course, it was a lie. I had no intention of ever calling Rob again, and was intending on blocking his number the second we hung up. But there wasn’t a real reason to antagonize him and tell him the truth.
“Ah. No, of course, I understand completely,” Rob replied as I heard him page through a book of some sort on the other end. “That works well for us, too.” Rob seemed to mutter as though he were thinking out loud. “Good. Great. That frees up Mitch a little bit, then, I guess. Perfect. Well, when you are ready to make another appointment, Mr. Munoz…”
I had been sort of half-listening to Callahan as I got myself ready to leave the office, but even though he’d casually dropped the name without so much as a pause, hearing him say Mitch’s name made my blood run cold.
Strange. That had almost seemed as though Callahan had called to put me on Mitch’s books, as though Mitch were busy working and they just wanted to make sure a repeated customer got the opportunity to make an appointment sooner rather than later. But he wasn’t working. He’d quit.
Right?
“I’m sorry. My phone cut out and I don’t think I caught that last part,” I said quickly.
“Oh, sorry. Just going over the schedule myself,” Rob answered as quickly as I had. “I just know that Mitch is a favorite of yours, and recently he’s been working on a more restricted schedule, so he’s been booking up very quickly. That’s all.”
“Oh,” I said simply. I was standing stock-still in my office, trying not to show any confusion or any kind of emotion at all on my face. The door to my office had a glass panel, and the last thing I wanted was to make my coworkers think there was something wrong. There wasn’t anything wrong.
Was there?
“I understand. Well, I’m going to be traveling for work a lot for the time being, so, no, I’m good for now. Thanks for checking in.”
“Of course. Any time, Oliver, any time,” Rob said before he said goodbye with some kind of reassurance that I could always call in and get on the books if I changed my mind. Something like that. I’m not sure. I was only halfway listening and only barely managed to lower the phone from my ear once I’d heard the line go dead.
Determined to get home as soon as possible, just as I’d originally planned, I shook my head free of the strangeness of that conversation. Mitch had quit. He’d driven up to Charlotte to quit. He’d told me he would, and I knew exactly what day he’d tendered his resignation. Mitch wouldn’t be on the books now, or at all, because he had truly, surely, and most unquestionably quit.
Mitch was definitely a smooth talker himself and always had a sixth sense about reading in between the lines with people. And, as a smooth talker, he usually wasn’t taken in when other people tried to sell him on doing something different than exactly what he wanted to. Hell, I was still sort of shocked I’d talked him into doing this—any of this—with me. But maybe he was too smooth a talker? Maybe Rob hadn’t really understood that Mitch was actually trying to quit when they met up in Charlotte? Maybe Mitch had made it seem like he was going on sabbatical or something, and had made Rob believe he would eventually return to the business, just so Rob wouldn’t get suspicious or try to persuade Mitch to stay and make things awkward? I could believe that.
But that didn’t exactly fit with what Rob had said on the phone. He’d almost explicitly said that Mitch was working, was booked constantly, and at least seemed to give an indication of working long-term if Rob was trying to schedule Mitch’s days far in advance.
But Mitch wasn’t working. He wasn’t. If he hadn’t wanted to quit, he just wouldn’t have. Nobody in the world could make Mitch do something he didn’t want. Anyway, even if he hadn’t wanted to quit when he’d gone up to meet Rob in Charlotte, Mitch would certainly want to now. Now, we had the baby on his or her way and now we had Marcos. There was no way Mitch was still working.
Ok, well, in that case, what explained the phone call?
Mitch had mentioned that Rob was going to be a difficult person to extricate himself from and that entire conversation could have easily been just that; Rob’s attempt to hold on to Mitch, somehow. So, maybe Rob was attempting to make trouble for Mitch in retribution for trying to quit? While that certainly seemed a plausible thing to believe about Rob, and while I could obviously understand very well why Rob would want to hold on to Mitch, those facts didn’t fully explain why Rob would call me about Mitch.
I supposed Rob could have been trying to provoke jealousy, suspicion, and well, exactly this kind of reaction in me. Except, in order to do so, Rob would have to have known that Mitch and I were together. That seemed to imply that Mitch had said he was with me, which I didn’t think Mitch would do. Or, Rob had gone to the trouble of spying on Mitch. Either way, that must be the explanation for that call.
I mean, I worked all day and had made it clear that Mitch could stay at home and focus on school, and now on school and the baby. Also, especially now with Marcos around, it wasn’t as though Mitch could double cross both of us and leave for a third place without us finding out.
No, he couldn’t. The whole notion was ridiculous. Mitch was at home most days, or he went out, but he didn’t go out to work, and he probably hadn’t spoken to Rob since Charlotte, and the whole thing was a meaningless, if unexplained, mistake. Nothing but that, nothing more.
Right?
19
Marcos
Honestly?
If you had asked me before I’d started seeing Mitch and Oliver what the hardest thing about being in a relationship with two people at the same time would be, I probably would have guessed there might have been some jealousy about who got to spend how much time with whom. I would have guessed that maybe it was difficult to see your two partners with each other and that you might feel left out. But, if I had guessed any of that, I would have been wrong.
The hardest part of being in a…couple? Three-way couple? Trinity? Triad? The hardest part in being in a family like ours were the sleeping arrangements. I slept on my back, stiff as a board, like I’d gotten used to from sleeping in sleeping bags. Mitch liked to spread out on his stomach like a starfish, and Oliver curled in when he slept. That meant that, in bed, I only took up the width of my body, Mitch took up a lot more space than he had with me in the bed, meaning he had to lump his legs or arms on top of me or Oliver to stretch out as much as he wanted to, and Oliver found himself curling more and more onto the very edge of the bed.
Of course, I had no place to complain. Regardless of how I felt about waking up with Mitch’s arm in my face, it was a thousand times more comfortable t
han sleeping at the hospital. And something about sleeping all tangled up in each other made it less and less likely I’d wake up in a panic, thinking I was at the hospital and suddenly needed to check up on Pedro or thinking I was back in Malmur and needed to get on my feet and dress on the double.
Instead, I was waking up very, very comfortably these days with enough arms and legs around me to remind me that I was in Fort Greene and in bed with these two.
With these three. Oh man, sleeping was going to get a lot more challenging as Mitch’s stomach expanded. But when the baby was actually here, maybe there being three of us would actually work out in our favor. We wouldn’t have to split late-night duties two ways, always leaving one of us exhausted like with normal families. We’d could split them three ways, leaving at least two other people with enough rest to both take care of the baby and whoever had gotten stuck with the night shift.
Like, right now, for example. If the baby had been here, and it had been Mitch’s turn for the night shift, Oliver could wake up and get the baby, Mitch could sleep until he was ready to get up, and I could make all of us breakfast.
That seemed doable. That seemed a lot more comfortable than most regular couples had it, actually. And better yet, that made me think of breakfast. So, throwing a glance over the rest of the bed, I quickly confirmed that Mitch and Oliver were still sound asleep.
Perfect. This was my chance.
I carefully peeled back the covers and let myself out of Mitch’s arms and out of bed as quietly and as gently as I could. Still watching them, I grabbed my phone off the night table nearest to me and tiptoed out of the room.
After I’d made it out of the room and had gotten the door shut behind me, I checked my phone for the time with the intention of asking the Internet what kind of omelets I could make with what I remembered we had in the fridge.
I never got the chance to make breakfast because when I tapped my phone awake, the display took my mind off of breakfast, Mitch, Oliver, and even the baby.
I had a missed phone call. Two of them, actually. Both were from a number I immediately recognized as belonging to the VA hospital.
My heart sank and I immediately felt a thin layer of freezing sweat break out over my skin. I’d been trying to be quiet before, but any attempt at letting anyone else sleep fell away completely.
Quicker than my brain could keep up with the rest of my body, the phone was on my shoulder, I was kicking my way back into the bedroom, and was halfway crouched on the floor trying to search around for my clothes as I talked to the receptionist.
“Marcos, what the he—” Mitch must have quickly realized something was seriously wrong. Another pair of wide eyes joined his as Oliver sat straight up in bed.
“What?” Oliver asked, still struggling to wake up fully. “What’s happening?”
“Marcos, is it Pedro?” Mitch asked, climbing out of bed as he ignored Oliver’s question. “What is it, Marcos?”
But just like he was ignoring Oliver, I was ignoring him, trying to focus on the receptionist’s voice.
“Yeah, lady. Okay. Acosta. Marcos Acosta for Pedro Acosta in the ICU. Yes, I’m his brother. Yeah, I’m his emergency contact. Look, can you please just tell me what’s—”
“They’re not going to be able to tell you anything over the phone,” Oliver called over his shoulder, as he ran from the bedroom to the bathroom with his clothes in his arms.
“Goddamnit,” I swore, as the lady on the other end of the line tried to explain, slow as molasses, what Oliver had just said as he ran past me. Mitch threw the sheets off himself, immediately found my clothes, and then handed them to me. Between the bundle of clothes and the old receptionist’s ongoing explanation, I decided for my clothes, so I hung up and tossed my cell phone onto the bed to free my hands up.
As I pulled my jeans up, I could hear Oliver throwing things around in the bathroom as he tried to get ready in a hurry. Mitch dove for the floor again in an attempt to go for his own clothes as quickly as possible, and I winced in sympathy for the wicked case of rug burn I was sure he’d just given himself.
“Y’all,” I said, but no one stopped their flurry of activity to listen. “Guys! Everyone, please, stop!”
The door to the bathroom opened to reveal Oliver’s head, and Mitch stopped and looked up at me.
“Don’t worry. It’s fine. There’s no need to rush. I’ll just go.” I both felt bad that everyone was having to run around first thing in the morning and too impatient to wait for them to continue getting ready. I had finally finished getting dressed. I was ready. I was going. “I’ll call y’all and update everyone. It’s fine. I promise. I love you both. Bye.”
I turned on my heels and walked out the door. At any other time I might have reflected on the fact that I had just outwardly declared I loved Mitch and Oliver, but the moment felt too frantic, so I ran down the steps of the house as quick as I could, threw myself into my truck, and then sped to the hospital.
“Everything is fine for the moment, Mr. Acosta,” the doctor said in an effort to reassure me.
“Fine?” I snarled with a hysterical laugh. “Everything is fine? Really? ’Cause it doesn’t seem fi—”
“I understand, Mr. Acosta,” the doctor said patiently, obviously having long years of dealing with the angry, scared, and confused family members of patients. “Everything is as stable as it possibly could be. Pedro gave us a fright last night, but the surgery went well, and right now, we just have to let him recover.”
I huffed, still high on the adrenaline of this morning. When I’d arrived and angrily demanded to be let back into Pedro’s room, Dr. Newsome had been called to explain the situation to me. Sometime last night, Pedro had “thrown a clot” as the medical staff termed it. He’d developed a blood clot, probably somewhere deep in his leg, which had dislodged and traveled to his lungs. As luck would have it, it hadn’t been a very big clot, otherwise it would have straddled both of his lungs and would have stopped his breathing, regardless of how hard the ventilator tried to help him. If that had happened and no one had caught it, then he would have suffocated in his sleep and would have died in one of the worst ways I could imagine anyone dying.
As things were, he had coded, but the staff had responded in time. I should have been grateful, I really was grateful they’d been there to save him, operating on him to dissolve the clot. But I didn’t feel especially grateful. I felt fucking furious. Furious at Pedro for scaring me half to death, furious at his clot for fucking this up for us after we’d worked so hard to keep Pedro with us, furious at the receptionist who was just doing her job by not telling me over the phone, furious at the staff for delivering this news and, most of all, fucking furious with myself.
I hadn’t been here.
I’d been at home, curled up, warm and comfortable just thinking about how much better sleeping in the soft bed with Mitch and Oliver was compared to sleeping here in the hard chair next to my brother. I had literally just been thinking this morning about how waking up to the smell of bacon and pancakes sure beat waking up in a panic to check on my brother. And in seeming divine punishment for having let myself think that? Here was my brother, alone and almost dead, with no one to wake up in a panic to check on him.
I hadn’t been here. I had been where I was happy, comfortable. I had been selfish. I hadn’t been rubbing his legs as much as I normally did. I simply hadn’t been around as much as I used to be. I’d gotten involved with Mitch and Oliver initially as a way to save Pedro’s life, and I’d let myself fall in love with each of them and with the life I could lead by their sides. But in the process, I’d forgotten my brother. I’d forgotten my responsibilities. I’d let myself believe I was free to enjoy life, and to love, and to wait for this baby with hope in my heart. For just a moment in time, I’d let myself believe the world could exist outside of the four corners of this room.
But now I remembered. And I wasn’t going to let myself forget again.
“We’re monitoring him closely,
you have my word,” Dr. Newsome said.
I forced myself to calm down and nod to show I’d understood. There was no point in being angry with anyone else, everyone else was doing what they were supposed to do in regard to Pedro, after all. The nurses were seeing to him, the doctor had performed life-saving surgery, even the little receptionist was trying to protect his privacy. The only one who’d managed to fuck up their responsibilities to Pedro here was me, so there was really no point in taking my feelings out on anyone else.
“Thank you, doctor. Thank you for what you and what everyone else is doing,” I said, as I watched Pedro in his bed, this time with more tubes and more machines connected to him than he ever had before.
I had assumed that was going to be the end of the conversation, now I was updated on what had happened, but the doctor didn’t seem to be leaving the room. Instead, he just sort of hung out awkwardly until I brought my gaze back to him.
“You know, Mr. Acosta…” the doctor said, clearly ready to begin to explain something uncomfortable to me.
I didn’t know, actually. But I could guess.
“I hate to say it and I know it’s hard to hear. We did everything we could in this situation, and Pedro is enough of a fighter that he’s still here with us. But… The reality is that this is a fact of life for the vast majority of folks in Pedro’s situation. We can keep compressing him to stop blood clots from forming, and you can come and rub him down as much as you want, but these kinds of issues are not uncommon despite the best and most regular screenings.” Dr. Newsome shrugged as if stating an unwelcome fact.
I sort of blinked back, only remotely understanding what he was trying to tell me.
“We’ve had Pedro with us for a while. It’s good, it’s great that you’ve gotten this much time with your brother, and we want to do everything possible to extend that as long as we can. Give him every opportunity to recover whatever function he can. But we can’t ignore that the more prolonged the case is, the greater the risk for this kind of complication. And Pedro’s case is one we would consider prolonged, so…”
