She's still wearing my jacket. That's the first thing I notice, which is stupid, because there are more important things to notice — like, for example, the fact that she's here at all — but the morphine doesn't prioritize correctly and what it gives me is: the jacket. My jacket, too big on her, the sleeves bunched up at her wrists.
She looks like she has no guard left.
I file this somewhere the morphine can't reach.
At some pointI told her my password. 0714. Bagel's birthday. She didn't ask what it meant, and I didn't explain, and then she left the room with my phone and called my mother.
I don't know what she said. I know she came back and her eyes were redder and she sat down and didn't say anything for a while.
And now my mother is coming to the hospital because a girl I've been on four and a half dates with called her at — what time is it? — called her at some terrible hour and used a word we've never used.Sa copine.She must have said it. I don't know if she believes it or if she was doing what she needed to do to make the situation work. I don't know which one is more terrifying.
My mother arriveslike a weather system.
She comes through the door already crying — not the quiet kind, the Maman kind, the full-body kind that involves grabbing your face and examining it for damage and then pulling you into a hug that hurts in six places but you can't say that because she's crying and you're the reason and sayingowright now would be the cruelest thing you've ever done.
"Mon bébé." Her hands are on my face. Her coat is still on. She smells like the car and cold air and the perfume she's been wearing since 1997. "Mon Dieu, Ethan, qu'est-ce qui s'est passé—" What happened—except the room has already answered her.
Behind her: Camille. My sister. Twenty-three, wearing sweatpants and the specific expression of a pastry chef whose rare four hours of sleep were just violently sabotaged by a frantic mother. She stops in the doorway. Looks at the bed. Looks at the machines. Takes a breath.
"You look terrible," she says.
"Thank you."
"Like, genuinely awful."
"I appreciate the detail."
Maman is still holding my face. She turns to Nora — and this is the part I wasn't ready for.
Nora is standing near the wall. She's been standing since they came in, pressed against the side of the room like she's trying to take up as little space as possible. Her hair is falling in directions she hasn't approved of. Her arms are wrapped around herself. My jacket is still on her.
Maman lets go of me. Crosses the room. And hugs her.
She hugs her the way Maman hugs — complete, unyielding, a hug that isn't asking permission and doesn't care if you're ready. And Nora — the girl who has been calm and measured and executing crisis protocol for six straight hours — makes a sound.
It's small. It's barely there. But I hear it — a crack in something that's been holding, a tiny fracture in six hours of composure. She puts one hand on Maman's back. Then the other. And her shoulders start to shake.
She's crying. For the first time all night, she's crying, and she's doing it into my mother's shoulder, and my mother is holding her like she's always held her, and I'm watching from the bed with morphine making everything arrive three seconds too late and I think:
She was alone. This whole time. She did all of it alone.
And then, immediately after:
Why?
"So,"Camille says, standing at the foot of my bed with her arms crossed and her head tilted at the angle that means she's about to say something that will make me want to climb out a window, "is everything... iseverythingokaydown there?"
The room goes silent.
Maman hits her on the arm. Not lightly.
"Camille."
"What! It's a legitimate question! He got hit in the—"
"Tais-toi."
Even Camille shuts up for that tone.
