The Friend Zone(86)

He was brain-dead.

Josh hadn’t been back to the hospital since Brandon’s diagnosis. He wouldn’t answer my calls.

The shift was strange. Our text thread went from dozens of unanswered texts from him, begging me to talk to him, to dozens of unanswered texts from me, begging him to talk to me. I wanted to know he was okay.

His silence told me he wasn’t.

I wore his sweatshirt today. I’d never wear it when I knew he might see it. I didn’t want to encourage him. But based on his absence over the last three days, I didn’t think I had to worry. And I needed to feel him wrapped around my body today. I needed to smell him in the fabric.

I just needed him.

This meeting wasn’t going to be easy on Sloan. It was about the next steps.

The door to the conference room opened up, and Brandon’s mom came out, speaking to his dad in tearful Spanish.

Sloan walked out of the meeting behind them, and I led her immediately into an empty waiting room.

Sloan was a zombie. She’d died three days ago when Brandon did. The light was gone from her eyes. Her legs walked, her eyelids blinked, but she was vacant.

“What did they say?” I asked, sitting her down on one of the cushioned chairs next to me.

She spoke wearily, her eyes rimmed a permanent shade of red. “They say we need to take him off of life support. That his body is deteriorating.”

The wail of Brandon’s mom came down the hallway. It had become a sound we knew all too well. She broke down at random. Everyone did. Well, everyone except for me. I was void of emotion while my predator and I shared space. Instead of feeling pain at Sloan’s suffering, I spiraled further into my OCD. I slept less. I moved more. I dove deeper into my rituals.

And nothing helped.

Sloan didn’t react to the sound of grief down the hall. “His brain isn’t making hormones anymore or controlling any of his bodily functions. The medications he’s on to maintain his blood pressure and body temperature are damaging his organs. They said if we want to donate them, we have to do it soon.”

“Okay,” I said, pulling tissues from a box and shoving them into her hands. “When are they doing it?”

She spoke to the room, to someplace behind me. She didn’t look at me. “They’re not.”

I stared at her. “What do you mean they’re not?”

She blinked, her eyelids closing mechanically. “His parents don’t want to take him off life support. They’re praying for a miracle. They’re really religious. They think he rebounded once and he’ll rebound again.”

Her eyes focused on me, tears welled, threatening to fall. “It’s going to all be for nothing, Kristen. He’s an organ donor. He’d want that. He’s going to rot in that room and he’s going to die for nothing and I have no say in any of it.”

The tears spilled down her face, but she didn’t sob. They just streamed, like water from a leaky hose.

I gaped at her. “But…but why? Didn’t he have a will? What the fuck?”

She shook her head. “We talked about it, but the wedding was so close we just decided to wait. I have no say. At all.”

The reality suddenly rolled out before me. It wouldn’t just be this. It would be everything. His life insurance policy, his benefits, his portion of the house, his belongings—not hers. She would get nothing.

Not even a vote.

She went on in her daze. “I don’t know how to convince them. The insurance won’t cover his stay much longer, so they’ll be forced to make a decision at some point. But it will cover it long enough for his organs to fail.”

My brain grasped at a solution. “Claudia. She might be able to convince them.”

She hadn’t been able to make the meeting. And she would side with Sloan—I knew she would. She had influence on her parents.

“Maybe Josh too,” I continued. “They like him. They might listen to him.” I stood.

She looked up at me, a tear dripping off her chin and landing on her thigh. “Where are you going?”

“To find Josh.”

*



I went to the station first, but Josh wasn’t there. I found him at home.

He opened the door after letting me pound on it for almost five minutes. His truck was in the carport. I knew he was here.

He pulled the door open and walked back inside without looking at me or saying a word. I followed him in, and he dropped onto a sofa I’d never seen before.

His face was scruffy. I’d never seen him anything but clean-shaven. Not even in pictures. He had bags under his eyes. He’d aged ten years in three days.

The apartment was a mess. The boxes were gone. It looked like he had finally unpacked. But laundry was piled up in a basket so full it spilled out onto the floor. Empty food containers littered the kitchen countertops. The coffee table was full of empty beer bottles. His bed was unmade. The place smelled stagnant and dank.

A vicious urge to take care of him took hold. The velociraptor tapped its talon on the floor. Josh wasn’t okay.

Nobody was okay.

And that was what made me not okay.

“Hey,” I said, standing in front of him.

He didn’t look at me. “Oh, so you’re talking to me now,” he said bitterly, taking a long pull on a beer. “Great. What do you want?”