“Please don’t be dead,” I mutter.
The pseudonymMr. Ximplies some sort of villainous lair. A Transylvanian castle set against the backdrop of a haunted gothic town, or some tech lab on a submarine at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. But he is, in fact, all human. He wears T-shirts and khakis, and he gets his hair cut twice a month, parted neatly on one side in the same way he’s worn it since he was sixteen years old. He has a boyish face but serious eyes, the look of a man who has seen things that haunt him.
And he lives in a small gray house that he bought with inheritance money, market value of three hundred thousand dollars, precisely enough to purchase and fill with appliances without having to go into any debt.
I know these things about him, but I’m the only one who does. He isn’t a trusting person, as evidenced by thefive security cameras that are aimed at my car when I pull up to his home.
I drive down the long, paved driveway, then onto the grass, where there’s already a dirt path made up of old tire treads, and I park behind the shed where my car won’t be visible from the street. It’s been years since I’ve visited—years since I’ve been invited—but I remember that he keeps this little parking spot to maintain privacy from the neighbors.
I don’t bother trying the front door. Not only will it be locked, but he keeps a steel bookshelf in front of it. The windows will also be covered by the blackout blinds. Instead, I try the Bilco door that leads down into the basement. Success! It isn’t locked. This on its own is concerning, but for now I’m just grateful I don’t have to break a window.
The basement is frigid, filled with boxes and damp. I make sure to close the door behind me, but I don’t lock it. Something nettles me, beyond the evidence that things aren’t as they should be. Mr. X is as reliable as they come. At all hours, he answers his messages within seconds. It makes me wonder if he ever sleeps, and worry that the nightmares keep him up too often.
As I approach the staircase that leads to the kitchen, I can smell that something is starting to burn. By the time I turn the doorknob, I get a whiff of something vaguely sweet, like a batch of cookies—one of the only things he ever eats, though you wouldn’t know it based on his slender frame.
Even before I’ve opened the door all the way, I see his arm, sprawled precariously against the pristine white tiles. Thin smoke is starting to billow out from the oven door,but the smoke detectors will be disabled—he would rather burn to death than allow rescue crews into his home. Which is why he’s going to hate what I’m about to do.
My phone is already in my hand as I rush to his side. The first thing I do is make sure he’s breathing. Miraculously, he’s alive. Cold and pale, but alive. He doesn’t respond when I shake him, and I’m startled by how terrible he looks when I roll him onto his back to check him for injuries. But there’s nothing, not even a scratch.
The 911 operator is asking me what happened. An overdose? Accidental poisoning? Suicide attempt? Assault by some mystery assailant who’s still lurking somewhere in the house? But I don’t know. I’m cursing at him under my breath between the useless answers I utter into the phone.
“You can’t die,” I vaguely remember shouting at him as I turn off the oven. I shove the bookshelf away from the front door to make room for the ambulance crew. The sirens are already wailing in the distance. “Do you hear me?” I tell him. “You better not leave me. You can’t leave me all alone.”
—
Now I sit in the cold plastic chair in the waiting room at the hospital. Nobody has come to speak to me and it’s been hours since they brought him in.
After they loaded him into the ambulance and carried him away, I stayed behind to replace the bookshelf and try to put things back the way he likes them. I don’t want him to come home to the wheel marks on the carpet or the lamp that got knocked over by the paramedic trying to maintain his vitals.
I hold it together long enough to get in my car and follow him to the hospital. He’ll be livid when he wakes up. He’ll tell me that if he ever goes dark, I should just leave him be. I should let him die before letting anyone into his space.What if they find out what I do?he’ll demand.What if they find my files and realize the cases we’re behind?He’ll tell me that it isn’t just about him—he’s protecting me, too. Me and Collette and even Waylen, although Collette has no idea the shit I’ve exposed her to indirectly.
When the doctor steps into the room, I stand. My hands are shaking—how long have they been shaking?—and I jam them into my pockets.
It’s dark outside, the downtown lights twinkling like busy stars. But the thick glass muffles all the sound, and for now, the world is silent, as though it’s on pause.
“You’re family?” the doctor asks me.
I nod. Mr. X is going to kill me for this. I am breaking the cardinal rule between us, saying out loud the greatest secret he has, the one that I’ve never even told Waylen.
“I’m his sister.”
Maybe this is the only true thing I’ve said all day.
My phone is buzzing in my purse, and I know Waylen will be worried first and furious second. I can’t tell him the truth.“You’re lying.”Collette’s voice in my head.“You lie all the time.”
“He’s stable now,” the doctor is telling me, and I struggle to pay attention. “His white blood cell count dipped below normal, so we’re checking his CBC and looking for anemia.”
“I don’t understand.” I turn my phone off without checking it. Elodie will also be fishing for gossip about mylife, no doubt intrigued by what I’ve been up to all day that I’m not sharing. “So, he just passed out?”
The doctor sits on one of the chairs and nods for me to do the same. Oh God, nothing good ever gets said by a doctor who wants you to sit down in a hospital waiting room. I shouldn’t. I should run away, go back to my family, go back to my pretend suburban life, disentangled from whatever I’m about to hear. That’s what he would want.
But he’s my brother. I’m all he has. So, I stay. And I sit.
“Jeremy”—the doctor says the name so easily, though I haven’t associated it with him since I was a child—“has stage three pancreatic cancer. It’s metastasized to his kidneys. He was made aware of this several months ago but has been declining treatment.”
The doctor is still going, saying more words even though I want to scream at him to stop. I stare just past him and the muted world on the other side of the window. Only, it’s not entirely muted. There’s a shrill whining in my ears. A screaming that won’t stop. That will never stop.
“I want to see him,” I blurt, interrupting something that was probably very important. “Where is he?”
