Break(16)

She checks a sheet of paper in front of her. “Oh, is he the teenager? The cute teenager with anaphylaxis?”

I bite my top lip to keep it still. “Yeah.”

“Betty?” She cranes her head back to some hospital nether region. “Where’d the ambulance teenager go?”

“109,” says some disembodied voice.

“He’s in 109,” the volunteer repeats. “Down the hall. Odd numbers are on the right.”

For some reason I keep staring at her and won’t move away from the desk. She clears her throat, but Naomi has to grab my arm before I’ll leave.

We walk down the hall, pass eight curtained doors. I hear babies crying and bones being set. A hollow-eyed nurse wheels a cart of vomit basins. It’s like this is hell, and it’s been created just for me and Naomi and Jesse. And Mom, I guess.

When I get to 109, Naomi says, “Look, I’ll leave.”

“You don’t have to.” He’s yours, too.

“Yeah, I do. Listen, I’ll go to your house and watch Will, okay? Then your dad can get down here.”

“Nom, you don’t have to.”

“It’s okay, really.”

We shuffle our feet against the linoleum. Part of me is dying for her to go so I can see Jesse, and part wants to grab her and hold on to her so I won’t have to go into his room.

I swallow. “Um . . . call Charlotte, all right? Let her know.”


“Sure.” She gives me a tight-lipped smile. “Give him . . . you know, something from me, all right?”

I watch her go, drowning in that damn sweatshirt.

All right.

I push open the curtain, and there’s Jesse.

He’s in the bed, curled up, his swollen eyes closed. Hives cover his arms, and he’s got an IV in the back of his hand and an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth.

Mom is talking to the doctor, saying, “I know, I know,” over and over. She looks up and says, “Jonah.” Then she ignores me, because there’s really not much more to say to me.

The doctor doesn’t look at me. Probably assumes I’m unimportant.

“Still no idea what happened?” I ask.

She shakes her head.

It’s usually this way. Usually, we do all we f*cking think we can and something gets through to Jesse, and we never know what. Or how. Or what we can do to fix him.

The doctors always tell Mom the same thing this one’s telling her now. Take this precaution. That precaution. Wean the baby. Cross-contamination. Do this to build his tolerance—he should not still be so sensitive. Consider home-schooling him. Consider a special school for him. Consider anything but a real life for him. Do anything but treat him like a real boy.

I scoot the chair closer to the bed and kneel next to him. “Hey. You up?”

He nods and opens his eyes. My stomach swoops like a Ferris wheel.

“How do you feel, brother?” I say.

He shrugs and takes the mask off. “Kind of hard to breathe still. Shit, what happened to your hand?”

I look down.

“No, the other one.”

Oh. My cast has cracked open at the hand, and there’s blood leaking out by the fingers. Crap.

“Don’t worry about that,” I tell him.

“Man—”

“Shh.” I glance up at Mom, deep in conversation with the doctor. “I didn’t do it on purpose. I freaked out and punched the wall.”

He sighs. He’s still wheezing.

“It’s going to be okay,” I say.

He winces. He hates that too.

“Sorry.”

“Don’t get inspirational speaker on me, Jonah.”

“What do you want me to do?”

He crawls his hand out from under the covers. I lay my cast in my lap and reach out my other hand. My fingers touch his IV.

“I know I know I know,” Mom says.

I squeeze Jess’s hand.





thirteen


WITHIN A FEW HOURS WE’RE ALL BACK AT HOME. Jesse’s still swollen and totally pissy and ends up collapsing on the couch, bitching at everyone who walks by. “It’s midnight. I have school tomorrow,” he whines whenever we wake him up to check if he’s breathing.

I’ve got a new unbroken cast that covers my new broken hand. Metacarpal fracture. + 1 broken hand = 19.

Pretty damn lucky, hmm?

Naomi refuses money from my dad and gives me a wink on the way out. She squeezes Jesse’s shoulder too, and I hope she washed her hands first.

Now Dad and I are silent in the kitchen.

“He’s asleep,” Mom says, walking in from the living room.

Dad hands me a bag of ice. “Good.” He was only at the hospital for an hour or so, so he still has the sports-jacket-and-tie aura of real life. Mom and I, on the other hand, both look around the kitchen like we haven’t seen it in years.

She slumps down at the table.

“We’ve got to do something,” Dad says. He places his hand on the back of my neck. “He cannot keep having these attacks.”

Mom’s sweaty hair clings to her hands. “He’s been better lately.”

“Better is not nine trips to the hospital a year, Cara.”

“Eleven,” I mumble.