Close Your Eyes, Hold Hands (34 page)

I wondered what had been done with whatever was left of my parents’ radioactive bodies.

I wondered how my Maggie had died.

I wondered what the fuck I was doing.

It’s a good thing I was stoned. It gave me an excuse not to talk.

On Sunday morning Cameron was kind of delirious, and I wondered if I was overdosing him on NyQuil by accident. I even had this paranoid thought that Dawn was overdosing him on purpose. Maybe she was secretly psycho. Isn’t there some mental illness where moms try and make their kids sick so the moms feel needed and important?

But I don’t think I ever really believed that about Dawn.

Still, between the strange ways that Cameron was talking to himself in this half-awake, half-asleep dream state and the fact his body was trembling, I went from worried to scared. I was really glad the diner was closed on Sundays so I didn’t have to leave him.
I decided if he wasn’t a lot better by dinnertime, I was going to take him to the ER at the hospital up the hill from us and get him some serious meds.

Flu shots are a lot like condoms. They’re very effective, but apparently they are not 100 percent perfect.

You can just imagine how pissed I was that night when some know-it-all ER resident told me this in his holier-than-thou, I-know-my-shit-and-you-don’t tone of voice. “The flu vaccine is very good,” he said, “but it’s only one of the many things you need to do to stay safe during flu season.”

All I had said was “But I got him a flu shot.” It’s not like I was questioning his “preliminary” diagnosis or even getting all defensive on him. I was, more or less, just speaking aloud. Talking to myself.
But I got him a flu shot
.

And I got this fucking quasi-rebuke. The guy had thick blond hair and perfect skin and rimless eyeglasses. He reminded me of an artsy kind of movie star.

It had still been light out when I’d had a cab bring Cameron and me to the hospital. But there are no windows in the ER so it felt like night anyway. Cameron was lying down on this gurney behind some drapes, and I was standing up beside this crap orange chair with metal armrests.

Looking back, the whole moment shows how surreal and childish my expectations were. I knew I was going to have to lie my ass off about who I was and what our relationship was and why I didn’t have a health insurance card, but I was pretty sure I could out-lie and out-bluster anyone there. I honestly expected a doctor or nurse would look at Cameron and say, “Here are some antibiotics, you’ll be fine in a day or two.” I mean, already I felt much better—practically well—and all I’d been doing was scarfing down DayQuil.

And my lie was pretty simple. I said I was Abby and this was my brother, Alex—two syllables, like Abby, so it was going to be easy for us both to remember—and I had forgotten my phone at home and our parents were in the Adirondacks for some spring skiing, but here was their phone number and it was okay to call them. I said they wouldn’t have cell service right now, but they would when they were back at the hotel after dinner that night. And then the number I gave the woman at the front counter was Camille’s phone. If anything, the woman who checked us in must have thought that my pretend parents were the assholes; after all, they were the ones who had gone skiing and left their older daughter alone to care for their sick younger son. I said my wallet with my health insurance card was with my phone, but my mom could give them all the information when they reached her.

But two things happened that I hadn’t expected.

“Your brother certainly has the symptoms of the flu, but I think there may be a little more going on. When will your parents get here?” Dr. Know-It-All asked me.

“They weren’t going to come back until tomorrow.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“They should come back now. Right now. We’re going to admit your brother.”

“For the flu?”

“For encephalitis.”

I had never heard of encephalitis, but obviously I didn’t like the sound of this. So the first thing that happened that I hadn’t anticipated was that they were going to keep Cameron overnight. And the second? He might be way sicker than I realized.

“What’s encephalitis?” I asked, but now there was this ringing in my ears and I was feeling a little dizzy myself. I had to sit down, and so I sort of collapsed into that ugly orange chair and only heard bits and pieces of his answer. The only things that lodged were
inflamed brain tissue
,
maybe a virus
, and
MRI
. They actually wanted to do an MRI of Cameron’s brain.

“So, let’s get him admitted,” the doctor said when he was done. Then, whether he meant to or not, he put the dagger to me. “I really wish you’d brought him in sooner,” he said.

And suddenly someone had stuck an IV into Cameron’s arm because he needed fluids and someone else was wheeling his gurney down the corridor and into an elevator. And then, of course, he was gone. Just like that. He was gone.

It was the next day that I would learn he was in intensive care. And he was in a coma.

I couldn’t see him.

I couldn’t even stay at the hospital.

That’s how fast it had all gone to hell.

I went there first thing in the morning. This time I went to the main entrance, which was a hell of a lot harder to find than the ER. Seriously. The place was huge and had three stories of glass windows, to give you a sense of just how massive it was. I could see people walking along the corridors two and three floors above me. It was weirdly airy and like the lobby of a nice hotel. I passed the gift shop and coffee kiosks and signs for every kind of outpatient surgery you can think of before I finally detoured, almost by accident, into reception and found a blond girl with a ponytail not much older than I was behind the counter. I told her I was here to visit a patient named Alex Bliss, and she looked him up on her computer and asked me, “Are you related to him?”

“Yup. Sister. What room is he in?”

She paused. “What’s your name?”

“Abby Bliss.”

She looked intently at her screen and then punched in a few letters. I feared she was typing my name.

“I can find the room, no prob, if you just give me the number,” I went on. “I’ve been here before.”

She didn’t nod or say anything. She just kept tapping and scrolling her mouse. “Printing me one of those visitor badges?” I asked hopefully.

She ignored me. Didn’t even shrug.

And that was when, once more, my gift of fear kicked in.

The woman from DCF was my mom’s age, but her hair, which was starting to go from mousy brown to gray, was a beach hippie mess. She was wearing a bulky and unbelievably ugly fisherman’s cardigan sweater—it had pewter hooks instead of buttons—blue jeans, and Birkenstock sandals with these thick brown socks. (And I thought I was a fashion disaster some days.) But her eyes were a very deep green. She had that going for her. I was pretty sure it was the receptionist who had sounded the alarm, but it was still like this woman had come out of nowhere. One minute I was alone on my side of the counter, and the next there was this person right there beside me.

“You’re Abby,” she said, and she extended her hand to me. In her other hand was a clipboard. “My name is Mary. Can we talk?”

I didn’t nod. I looked behind her to make sure she was alone.

“We can sit right over here,” she went on, and used her clipboard like a paddle to funnel me over to a couch. I almost tripped on the coffee table with magazines in front of it.

“So, like I said, my name is Mary,” she repeated when we both were seated. “I’m with the DCF—Department for Children and Families.”

“Is everything okay with my brother?”

“Alex is in intensive care.”

My stomach lurched like I was on a roller coaster and we had just gone straight downhill out of nowhere. “What? Is he dying?”

Clearly I sounded frantic; she put her hand on my leg. “No.
The coma is medically induced. That means the doctors put him into a coma on purpose to prevent his brain from swelling any further.”

“His brain is swelling?”

“Yes. There’s inflammation.”

“Is he going to … get better?”

“We hope so,” she answered, but she did not sound especially confident. In fact, she didn’t sound confident at all.

“But you don’t know for sure.”

“No. Your little brother is very, very sick.”

“Can I see him?”

“You can’t. I’m sorry.”

“But I can see him when our parents get here from the Adirondacks, right?” I really asked that. Looking back, I don’t know whether I was bluffing or becoming a little deluded—like I honestly believed two grown-ups were going to materialize out of nowhere and save my ass.

Mary took a deep breath and then tried to look me in the eye with one of those soulful I’m-here-for-you social worker gazes. (These days, I seem to get them all the time.) “We called that number you gave the hospital last night. It belongs to someone else. Someone named”—and here she looked briefly at her clipboard before staring back at me—“Camille. It does not belong to your parents. Maybe you gave us the wrong number by mistake. It happens. But maybe there’s something else going on here. Is there a reason you and your brother are … trying to avoid your parents? Tell me the truth, Abby: Is there a reason you two had to leave … home? Is your last name really Bliss?”

“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said.

“Abby—”

“I really do. I promise, I won’t leave.”

But, of course, that is precisely what I did.