“But—”
“Dad suggested we stop by for a visit in about an hour. He said she seemed to be doing better today.” I check the time on the microwave. “Will you be okay here for a few hours?”
The four of us will go to the hospital together but visit her one at a time so we don’t overwhelm her.
“I’ll find something to keep me busy.”
He starts loading the dishwasher. The idea of him alone in my childhood home is oddly...comforting. If there’s one person I could trust not to snoop, it’s Wesley, but even if he did I can’t think of anything I would want to hide. Even the awkward tween school photos seem safe in his hands.
“Are you sure? We probably won’t be back until dinnertime.”
Wesley stands next to me but he’s careful to leave a safe distance between us. He hasn’t touched me once since he let go of my hand in the front room. It’s the last thing I should be thinking of, the very last thing, but the right side of my body is electric where it reaches for him. He’s here because he knew I needed him, but maybe he might need me, too?
“I could catch a cab back from the hospital after I’ve gone in to see her,” I muse.
“Corrine.” He puts his hand over mine. I go still while my skin sparks for him. “Everything will be okay.”
“Right.” I nod. I sound breathless. “Okay.”
When he holds my hand like this, I can believe it.
As we trample up the porch steps, all the lights in the house blaze. The house looks warm and inviting even if it doesn’t feel that way. We all try to cram into the front door at the same time. Something we’ve done since we were kids, except now that I’m the smallest of the four of us I almost get crushed between a brother and the doorjamb, then trampled by six pairs of boots. When I get into the house, my brothers are already throwing coats onto the bench and I spend an extra two minutes placing them on hangers and hanging them up in the closet.
There are crisp lines on the gray living room carpet from the vacuum. The air smells like lemon-scented cleaner combined with something mildly spicy wafting from the oven. My brothers troop into the kitchen and make exclamations about dinner.
We couldn’t convince Dad to come home with us, even though he looked like he needed a shower, food that wasn’t made in a hospital, and a nap on something other than a chair. But he won’t leave Mom until she wakes up.
When I walk into the kitchen, I have to work very hard to fight the smile that wants to take over my face. The boys hover around Wesley as he bends over the oven, pulling out a casserole dish full of something cheesy. He’s using my mom’s matching oven mitt and apron set. There are frills and multicolored owls all over them.
He smiles at me over Sebastian’s shoulder and now I don’t stop myself. I smile back. It feels so good.
“I only learned how to cook like, five things well when my mom was sick. So I hope you guys like enchiladas.”
He places the casserole dish on a trivet and my brothers surround the food like a pack of wild dogs.
Wesley pulls off the apron and stops in front of me. “Hey.”
“Hi.”
“How is she?”
I watch my brothers over his shoulder and nod toward the French doors leading to the backyard. “Let’s talk outside.”
I pull on a sweater that smells like Mom’s vanilla hand soap and we step into the crisp evening air. I sit on the wooden patio steps and Wesley sits beside me, hunching into himself for warmth. I pull off half of the sweater and he does his best to curl under it.
“She had an allergic reaction to a combination of her medications. She collapsed and they took her to the hospital. She’s been in and out of consciousness since. They think she’ll be okay but because her body was already under a lot of stress from the cancer and the treatment, she went into organ failure. They need to stabilize her kidney function before they’ll say that she’s in the clear but...they’re optimistic.”
Wesley lets out a breath that crystallizes in front of us.
“Okay.” There’s a world of relief in that one word. He turns to me. “Everything is going to be okay, Corrine.”
I nod. But tears still brim in my eyes. “I thought... I prepared myself for the cancer killing her. Like, I prepared myself for what that process would be like. I didn’t prepare myself for her dying from some...” I dash at the wetness on my face. “Stupid allergic reaction. I’m not ready.”
I bury my face in my hands so he doesn’t see me cry. But he lets me nonetheless. He sits here while the tears accumulate and then the sobs come. He puts his arm around me and holds me up while everything inside of me crumbles.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so tactless. Here I am complaining about losing my mother when...when...” Another sob shudders through me. “You’ve already lost yours.”
“You’re not tactless,” he promises, his voice sincere. “You’re in a shitty situation. You’re allowed to be upset about it.”
