36. Harvey

36

HARVEY

It's been nearly three fucking days. I've been blowing up her phone with no fucking answer, but with nowhere obvious to go looking for her, my only option was to wait for her to show up. Still, I drove around town in the middle of night, just on the off chance I'd run into Nia.

It's Saturday morning, and though I spent the majority of last night hoping she'd show up to the rink during scrimmage, I'm drawn back to Skateland today. I start to wonder if I'm strong enough for this, but it's too late now. I'm in love with her, and I can't let her do this to herself, though I don't know if that's enough to stop her.

There's not a single car in the parking lot, but something tells me that means nothing today. Reaching for my key is pointless, because leaning on the double door is enough to push it open.

It's unlocked.

My heart thrums, I'm only three steps in the building, but it's enough to hear the music coming from Lonnie's place.

It's a short-lived feeling of relief that at least she's safe.

The music is too loud for comfort, for any reasonable person. It causes a lump to form at the top of my throat, and I can no longer swallow it down. Not until I see her. I run to the little studio apartment our friend once called home, the music twice as loud once I'm inside, and there she is.

Everything suddenly moves impossibly slow. It feels like ages before my brain can make the connection. The way she sits on the ground with her back against the wall, her head slumped down to the side, her skin no longer golden but a pale, grayish color, foam pouring freely from her lips.

"Ant?nia." I shake her, my voice coming out a tremble.

Her eyes barely flutter.

"Nia, baby, what the fuck did you do?" I'm asking myself; I know she's not capable of answering.

I go through her things in a fury, tossing her bag apart, hoping that she's got something that can reverse a little of what she's done to herself, just enough to buy me enough time to get her to a hospital.

"Fuck!" I scream, rummaging through the backpack, but aside from her phone charger and her wallet, there's nothing else.

She moans like my chaos is disruptive to her high. I come back to her, lifting her eyelids by force. She's hardly there at all, and it feels like my world is ending faster than it took for it to come into existence. I no longer know what I have time for, what she can hold on for. I lift her into my arms, my keys still in my pocket as I thumb through my phone.

The number is there, saved. I don't know if it still works, though. He's had a million phone numbers, and half of them were burners. I call anyway. We're closer to his house than any hospital, and God knows an ambulance will take three days to get here.

"Catie?" The voice is shocked that I'm calling, and I haven't even spoken. He's kept my number this whole time too.

"I'm not calling to talk. I need your help. My…" I take a deep breath before I get the rest out. "My girlfriend is overdosing, and I don't know what to do."

He doesn't ask what I'm doing with a junkie, doesn't mock that I didn't have the tolerance for him but have the tolerance for her. He hears the panic in my voice, and he knows I need my big brother.

"Does she have any naloxone around?" he asks calmly.

"Is that Narcan? No. I looked everywhere." I've given up searching for anything in the barren apartment and resort to lifting her over my shoulder.

"You're gonna have to take her to the hospital, kiddo," he says with a sigh.

My voice is a pleading cry. "You're closer. Let me bring her to you." I'm not sure she'll make either drive at this point, and I know my brother. I know he can fix this.

"This girlfriend of yours," he says, "big scar on the side of her head?"

My stomach sinks so deeply, it feels like an abyss is created inside me.

He's her dealer.

Of course he is.

I'm loading her into the backseat while trying to process this information, but I don't want to accept it for what it is.

"Let me bring her to you!" I'm screaming. I'm so angry at him for once again taking the things I love from me with drugs.

First him, now her.

"No. Take her to the hospital. It's time for Nia to hit rock bottom." I'm pretty sure I hear him disconnect, but I'm still cursing and shouting.

"Ryan, what the fuck?" I'm sobbing from frustration and panic, but I don't have time to dwell.

This is exactly why I'd written him off, why I stopped depending on him, why I didn't want him in my life anymore. Ryan makes his own rules, his ego like God. He thinks he gets to decide who's the right kind of addict for saving and who's not, who conquers his gauntlet and who is crushed by it. I should have fucking known. My brain won't stop, but I settle on the passing thought that it would take twice as long for an ambulance, so I start the car.

I drive twenty over the speed limit, unsure how I don't crash, because my head is turned, checking on Nia every five seconds. I call to her every so often, but she only answers in mumbles. By the time we get to the hospital, she's completely unresponsive. I must look as desperate as I feel, because when I park in front of the emergency room doors, the medical assistants are scrambling out with a wheelchair.

It only takes three words to separate us.

"Are you family?"

The thought of lying doesn't occur to me. I'm in such a haze, all I can do is shake my head, the nurse's voice muted as she tries to explain that no one other than family can follow past the doors.

And then I watch them take her where I can't follow.

At least four staff members have asked me to sit down. The woman behind the front desk is beyond irate with me, and I'm pretty sure they've threatened security twice. I can't calm down, can't sit, can't think, can't stop.

I don't know how long it's been. All I can do is pace and nibble at the bits of dry cuticle that now bleed on nearly every finger. The skin is raw, red and torn, but I continue until it's butchered meat before moving on to the next nail.

I'm ushered back to a waiting room chair anyway, my anxiety uncontainable. Shifting my focus internally is the only way to stop. I pay attention to the thoughts now, no longer letting them serve as loud white noise playing on repeat, but instead picking each individual word out.

That's when I tell myself it's my fault, that I should have stopped her from leaving, that I should have seen that she was already so far fucking deep into this cycle of self-destruction from the beginning. That maybe if I had just been honest…

That I should have put my trust in her the same way Lonnie did.

I'm lost in the sea inside my head, but not too far under the surface to not recognize his voice.

"Ant?nia Da Silva, came in not too long ago."

Every hair on my body stands.

I'm suddenly afraid to look up, to risk making eye contact, for him to see me here. After denying me—no, denying her the help she needed?

"Family?" she asks just the same as she asked me.

"Yes," he lies, a wave of envy hitting me that I wasn't able to do that for myself.

I just want to hold her hand.

I just want to make sure she's okay.

"Need some sort of proof or something," the woman says with an air of annoyance, and just as I'm considering finally looking his way, to relish in the satisfaction of him being turned down access to her…

He's right in front of me.

"Are you coming?" His hand extends like he wants to help me up.

I don't take it, don't look at his face yet. I can't. He's the last person I want to see right now. He's the reason she's in there. I stand anyway.

"They're letting you in?"

He chuckles, cocky and poorly timed, but that's his style anyway. "Hard to deny that I'm family when I'm in possession of her government documents." He waves a folded up piece of paper in my face, and I rip it from his hand before opening it up.

It's her birth certificate.

I don't have time to ask him how or why he has this, though; the nurse takes us through the double doors, and her room is the first one to our left. I still haven't lifted my eyes from the paper, avoiding the prickly stare of my brother's gaze.

"I'm not sure how she survived that," the nurse says softly as she turns the knob. "We've never had to deliver so many doses to one patient before." She bites her lip, fumbling with her chart once we get inside. "Your wife must have a guardian angel on her side."

The shock of her calling my brother her husband has me whipping my neck so hard, it's almost impossible for me to recompose myself and remember that's what he said to get us in here.

"Will you be calling the police?" he asks, and I'm not surprised. That's all he cares about, probably only here to threaten her not to open her mouth about where she got it.

"No, we don't do that here. There will be a caseworker coming in to check on her and talk to her about overdose prevention and steps to take so this doesn't happen again, once she's a little more alert. After that, you can take her home, and that's when the hard part begins." She's ignoring me, her attention only on my brother, as if he even gives a shit about her.

"What's that?" I ask, immediately regretting and knowing the answer before it comes out of their mouths in unison.

"Detox."

"Why is she not awake?" my brother asks.

"She'll probably come out of it soon. Every reaction is different. Once she's awake, we can start the discharge process," she tells him.

A slightly sleepy groan pulls my attention back to Nia, and I don't care that the nurse is here. I rush to her side, grabbing for her hand.

"Give us some privacy?" Ryan asks her.

I don't turn around to watch her leave, my whole world right here in front of me. She closes the door loudly enough that when the latch clicks shut, my mouth is moving on command. "Why the fuck are you here?"

"Closure," he says from the chair in the corner of the room, as far away from Nia as possible.

As if his plan is to just sit there until she's fully awake.

"For you, or for her?" I ask.

I still haven't looked at his face.

"Does it matter, Catie?"

I can't help but reject the nickname with my entire body.

I was never a fucking Catie, except when I was his sister.

I hope it tastes like saltwater on his tongue.

I hope it dries his mouth out.

"She didn't OD off my shit." He says it so plainly, and I'm not sure if he's trying to clear his name or his conscience. "I cut her off almost two weeks ago."

Him not being to blame doesn't make any of this better.

"Are you the one who got her started?" I finally turn my head and take a good look at his face. I hate how much we look alike.

He chuckles like the asshole he is. "Nia has always been smart enough to know her limits. I made a bad decision, but I'm not the bad guy here."

"She was fucking falling apart when she went to you. You might as well have just given her a gun." I know my words hurt, I know they remind him of our father and that while it affected me, it didn't define me like it did him.

My voice is devoid of emotion, but it's a mask. I need him to think he's not affecting me.

Because inside, it's tearing me apart.

"M?e?" Nia's voice is weak and raspy.

"It's me," I say that like it means anything, like I'm not just someone she walked out on.

"Cat?" She squeezes my hand, finally opening her eyes. They're immediately flooded with tears, and all I want is to hold her in my arms now and tell her she's safe.

"Fuck." It's all my brain has the power to come up with. The relief of hearing her call my name is everything.

Her eyes dart past me, and her expression changes too suddenly for me to think anything other than she's noticed him.

Ryan.

"Get out." It's barely a whisper from her lips, but every hair on my arms comes to stand at hearing her say those words.

They aren't for me though. They're for him.

"Oh? And here I thought I was coming to say goodbye to you, squirt." He laughs it off, standing up from the chair and walking toward her despite her request.

Nia's eyebrows furrow in the middle, but she doesn't ask for clarification. He drops his hands to the bed's metal support bars. "You broke my heart too, kid."

"You can't be my friend and my dealer," Nia says without breaking his stare.

With a nod, he turns to walk away but freezes.

The scene is like something from a movie, and I'd laugh if I wasn't on the verge of crying.

"Proud of you," he says to her, letting go of the bars before he shifts his gaze to me. "Proud of you too, Catie."

And then, he's gone.

For the first time ever, I hope it's for good.