Chapter 14

Fourteen

Ezra

“ E zra Masters?”

I lift my head, startling slightly.

“If you’ll come with me…”

My heart starts hammering as I follow the nurse down a hall with doors on each side. “Your brother is getting a sedative before his MRI. When there’s a history of anxiety, we like to try to offer our patients access to a parent. Since your mom couldn’t be here today, you’ll be allowed back.”

I can barely swallow as she stops in front of a wide, metal door. “He’s not going fully to sleep. Still, when you see him in the post-procedure area, he may be tired or sleeping. His mother—your mother, or is it stepmother?—has arranged for the doctor to call her during the post-MRI visit, but you may want to be back there with him.”

I manage to nod. She smiles, thin-lipped, and pushes the door open.

Mills is lying on his back in a hospital bed. His eyes are shut and there’s an IV running into a vein at the top of his hand. He has a gown on. There are sheets over his legs, up to his chest.

My stomach pitches. I can’t get my legs to move me toward him.

“Your stepbrother is here,” the nurse tells him.

DG’s eyelids lift open. His mouth curves a little as he tries to keep his eyes open to greet me. “Hey.” His voice sounds slow. His eyes drop back shut.

“This stuff…always…hits me” —his eyes peel back open— “so hard.”

I stand beside him, looking down and feeling vaguely panicked.

“It’s okay.” I force myself to lay my hand on his arm. “Feeling okay?” I ask dumbly.

I think he tries to nod, but his head barely moves. “It’s…ll be…fine.”

Then he’s out. His head lolls slightly to the side on its pillow, and the nurse laughs. “I think it hit him. He was trying to stay awake for you.”

“He was?”

She smiles. “Just to say bye.”

I stand there as long as I think I can. Thinking of another room. Another patient. How the needle always seemed to burn.

Miller

“I’m finished?”

“That’s it,” Dr. Kelley tells me with a quick smile. “I’ll let you get dressed.” She puts a finger over her mouth, like she’s asking me to keep a secret. “Skip the wheelchair ride out this time. You can leave as soon as your stepbrother arrives. ”

I pull on my clothes one piece at a time, holding onto the rail with one hand as I do. Whatever was in the IV made me so tired. Even now, after almost three hours, I feel sleepy and off-balance.

Also, Ezra isn’t here. When I woke up—apparently I slept through the whole hour in the MRI, as well as a second EEG—they tried to bring him back, but the nurse said he wasn’t in the waiting room. I called him just to let him know what’s what, but he didn’t answer. That was more than an hour ago.

After I’m dressed, I sit in one of the plastic chairs beside the wheeled bed I just got out of and send him another text. ‘Hey I’m done. Can u pick me up? Like in the circle drive/drop off?’

I have this fuzzy memory of him coming back to the pre-procedure room, saying something to me before they whisked me away to the MRI, and the nurse confirmed that when I asked. She said she didn’t know where he went after that, though.

I’m so dead-ass tired, I don’t even want to walk out to the lobby, so I sit for a second waiting for him to text back. But there’s nothing. What the fuck?

I check my phone one more time before I leave the room, and there’s one from Mom. ‘Such good news! Let me know when you boys get home.’

The doctor called Mom on speaker phone when she briefed me, because she was worried I might not remember what was said—but basically, everything looked normal. Right now, the theory for my seizure is that when I got knocked out—when Ezra pushed me off the trestle bridge—it shook something up in my head. I told the doctor I’d knocked myself out; I made her promise not to tell Mom. Apparently if you get knocked out and your brain’s already wonky, that can shake shit up.

So far, there’s no need to start meds again. So that’s the upside.

Downside: still can’t drive. Not for another six months. Which means it’ll be winter before I’m behind the wheel again, and in the meantime? Gotta rely on Ezra to shuttle me around .

I try calling him as I walk toward the lobby. When he doesn’t answer, I leave a message.

“Hey. Been trying to get you for a while. Can you pick me up? Thanks.”

I blow a long breath out and run a hand through my hair. It’s all sticky from the EEG leads.

I spend a minute looking around—at all the families, parents with children. One woman is carrying a little baby car seat thing. That makes me sad. I’ve still got that heavy feeling as I walk outside and stand beside this big bronze sculpture of kids dancing. Before I can lift my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, I see a black Jeep pull into the drive. It stops near me, and the door opens.

I feel woozy climbing in, but I don’t want to let him know it.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I manage.

“Got your burger.”

He taps the dashboard, where a paper sack sits.

My chest loosens up a little. “That’s where you went?”

“Looks like it.” I frown over at him, noticing he’s wearing that peach ball cap again. It’s angled so I can’t see his eyes.

He starts out of the circle drive, and I notice there’s a soda in the cup holder.

“Sunkist,” he tells me. “Your mom said you like.”

“Did you talk to her? We’ve been trying to get you on the phone.”

“Different day.”

So, is he saying my mom told him I like orange soda on a different day? But he didn’t speak with her today while I was at the MRI? Did it take him more than two hours to get this food? Why didn’t he answer his phone?

I can’t read his face as he pulls onto the busy road in front of the hospital. Is he going to offer me some kind of explanation? Seconds pass…and then a minute. I tear into the burger because I’m fucking starving .

“Thanks. For this,” I make myself say.

He makes a grunt-like noise, and then he reaches into a compartment and pulls out…earbuds? I watch as he puts them into his ears.

Okaaay .

I don’t know how much time passes while I wait for him to act normal. To ask me how it went or…fucking anything. He doesn’t speak to me at all as we drive out of Birmingham and toward Fairplay. I can’t even guess what’s his problem.

Did I say something weird when he came back to see me?

Then, as I’m crumpling up my burger’s wrapper, it hits me: too much . I bet coming back to the room to see me before the MRI was too damn much for Mr. Emotion-phobe here. I was high off my ass, wearing a purple hospital gown with kangaroos on it. When I saw him, I bet I did a goofy smile or some such dumb shit.

I take a few deep breaths and tell myself to try to chill out. Maybe he’ll be normal again in a minute. But if not, I’ll analyze this later. When my head is clearer.

Ezra hangs a left onto the road that’ll take us back to Fairplay, his triceps popping out as he turns the wheel.

So what he’s one of God’s most beautiful creations? If it turns out this doesn’t work between us, college will have a ton of hot guys, at least some of them out of the closet. I’m imaging what my ideal type would be—someone who doesn’t look like Ezra—when he pulls his earbuds out of his ears. His eyes swing to mine, and, in a scratchy voice, he asks me, “How’d it go?”

I open my mouth, but I can’t get words to come out. Now you wanna know? I hear it in my head, but I can’t bring myself to say it. To let him know I’m hurt he didn’t ask me sooner.

“Went fine. Just watch and wait or whatever.”

“What did the tests show?”

“Nothing. ”

His brows scrunch. His pretty lips press flat and pensive. “Is that a good thing?”

“I guess. Better than showing something bad.”

“Do they think it’s going to happen again?”

I shrug. As long as you don’t push me off a bridge again . “Might be a fluke thing. Never happen again.”

“Did they think it was a fluke?” he presses.

“I don’t know.” I rub my forehead. “She just said check back in later.”

“When?”

I can’t help a laugh at his aggressive—if belated—questions. “Six months.”

He nods slowly.

“If you’re worried about driving me, don’t be. I like cycling sometimes, and I’ve got a bike I can take to school. Or I can walk. It’s…what? I bet it’s less than two miles.”

“A bike ?” His face twists, and his jaw drops open. “Are you serious?”

“I know it’s less cool than your Jeep, but—”

“Mills, you’d face-plant.”

“No I wouldn’t.” I laugh again, because he’s being insane. “I’m good on a bike, dude.”

“I’m saying if you had a seizure.”

“If I have a seizure, there’s a lot of places that’ll hurt to fall on. That’s just life.”

His eyes widen. “What about soccer?”

I let out a sigh. “Soccer is fine. When you’re our age, no one’s gonna tell you that you’ve got to quit what you do.”

“Fuck,” he murmurs.

“Don’t feel sorry for me. I’m not quitting soccer.” I laugh.

“Should you, though? What if you fell down out there and—”

“Get trampled?” I shrug. “What if a meteor falls on our house? ”

“The odds aren’t the same.”

“You don’t know what they are.”

I watch as he swallows, going quiet as his eyes fix on the road. He’s still and somber for a long time—maybe around fifteen minutes. As we turn onto Fairplay’s main drag, I stretch my legs, rubbing at my knee, which has a bruise. I don’t know where I got it.

“Maybe you could wear a helmet,” he says as we pass by the antique mall.

“Mmm, maybe .”

We drive by the Burger King, by Dollar General. He turns onto the road that will take us to our street.

“I think you should,” he says.

“Okay, Daddy.” I smirk, shaking my head. It still feels fuzzy as hell. When I get home, I’m gonna crash. Makes me feel fucking lame, but I’m so tired. And I would like to have a break from thinking.

We don’t speak again until he parks. Then I’m out, and to the house’s front door as fast as I can without being obvious—or falling on my face.

I unlock it, step into the foyer, and turn back to see him coming around the Jeep. “Thanks for taking me,” I tell him.

Then I haul ass to my room.