by Aiden Bates
“So, what?” I asked, for the sake of being perfectly clear. At least that way there wouldn’t be any confusion when I went home to try to explain the situation to Mitch. “You’re calling it all off, then?”
“I don’t want to!” Marcos said, loud enough that a few of the others in the waiting room swiveled their heads up to look at us. However, nobody seemed to be paying too much attention, invested as they probably were in the situation that had led them to be here in the first place.
“I don’t want to,” Marcos said, repeating himself a little more calmly. “I don’t know. No. I just don’t know. I just need time to think, okay? I need time.”
Time to think about what? It was something I wanted to ask, but I fought down the urge. If there had ever been a time to really think about this before going through it with it, it had long since passed, and this didn’t seem like a good time to turn around and change your mind about how involved in the family you wanted to be. I definitely wasn’t going to say any of that to Marcos, though, who already seemed drained. Instead of picking a fight or anything, I just nodded and forced myself to try to understand Marcos’s perspective.
“Time. Yeah, okay. You need time.”
“And space,” added Marcos. “I need space.” He dropped his gaze to the floor, once again avoiding my eyes.
I think I must have been staring at Marcos without really reacting. Marcos stole a quick glance at me, took one look at my expression, and then immediately brought his gaze back down. I realized he was trying to distance himself from us, and in my experience, any time anyone asked for “space” in a relationship, it was just an attempt at gently breaking up with someone. Still, I couldn’t help but be endeared by the sheepishness he had to him. He almost looked like a little boy who had broken something.
“You get it.” Marcos resolutely kept his head down as though he were trying to count the tiles on the floor all while having this conversation. “Don’t you?” he asked with another glance up, which he managed to hold this time. “You have to get it, right? It’s my brother. You have to understand because of… Well, you know…”
“Because of Rich,” I said, finishing the sentence he seemed reluctant to finish. “Yeah, I understand. I understand more than you probably think. I’ve been in your position where I asked everyone to leave me alone so I could focus on my brother, and I’ve been in the position that comes next where you wish you weren’t dealing with this alone. Don’t cut us off, Marcos.” I looked up into his eyes to make sure he heard me. “I understand, and though Mitch doesn’t have personal experience with this, he cares enough about you to try to understand you as best he can. Exactly because we understand is why you shouldn’t cut us off right now.”
Marcos gulped hard and didn’t say anything. I figured it was due to his military background, but when Marcos stood, he usually stood pretty stiff and still. Now, a certain tension to his bearing made him anxiously shift his weight from foot to foot.
“He’s your brother,” I said, as gently as I could. “I know we’re not official or anything but, you know, that makes him our brother, too, right?”
Marcos didn’t react in any way, but at least he wasn’t rejecting the notion. I felt bold enough to reach for his bicep and to rub at it in what I hoped was a reassuring gesture.
“Familia, right?”
Marcos made a strangled kind of noise as he sobbed drily once, and then tried to choke it back. He nodded slowly but didn’t move otherwise.
“Hey, it’s okay. You don’t have to say or do anything. Just…don’t disappear on us, alright? We’ll come by tomorrow. We’ll bring you food, both of us, Mitch and I.”
“That would be good,” Marcos whispered so quietly I could barely make out what he’d said. I assumed he was still doing his level best to not cry in public or in front of me, so that was good enough for me. At least he wasn’t saying he never wanted to see us again. At least he didn’t seem to blame us for preventing him from being at his brother’s side last night.
“I…” Marcos brought the wrist cuff of his thin hoodie up to his eyes to quickly dab at them. “I should…”
“Yeah, that’s okay. I get it. You have to go. No worries,” I said, shaking my head to dispel any worry he’d offend me by getting back to the room.
Marcos hung around awkwardly for a few more seconds before jerking his head up at me as a goodbye and turning on his heels. I watched him retreat through the double doors to the ICU, worrying my teeth with my tongue as he disappeared from view.
Surely, after everything that had happened with Rich, I would have more words of wisdom to share with someone in a fairly similar situation. I wished I could say something that would magically comfort and reassure Marcos right now when he needed to hear them. But the truth was, I doubted I be able to say anything that might help.
Maybe that was because there wasn’t any such thing. Maybe it was because I, like Marcos, didn’t want to hear any magical words. I had just wanted to be left alone. I had wanted people to respect my wishes, and my wishes had been for time with Rich and the space to make the most of that time.
Marcos was right. I did understand.
In the end, whatever Marcos decided to do in regard to our relationship and to the baby had to be Marcos’s decision. If we cared about him, we owed him the acceptance of his decision. And speaking of things owed, I still owed someone at home a box of chocolates and flowers, at least.
I sighed heavily, and then texted Mitch to let him know I’d be home soon.
Just you. Mitch replied, and he wasn’t asking.
Yeah. I texted back, relieved Mitch seemed to already grasp the gist of the situation.
Just me.
22
Marcos
I said goodbye to Oliver. Well, I tried to say goodbye to Oliver, anyway.
I couldn’t talk to him in the waiting room. I barely had the guts to stand there with him, but I especially couldn’t imagine saying anything without breaking down and embarrassing myself after he’d mentioned being family.
Familia, as he’d put it.
I was touched by what he’d said but, more than anything, I was ashamed. I had figured my visitor was either Mitch or Oliver or both, and I had come down the hallway, steeling myself to let them down easily. Instead, Oliver had completely gotten where I was coming from, and had been kind enough to show me that he understood what Pedro and I were going through right now.
In that moment, Oliver had shown me more understanding than my own mother had sometimes. If he had been jealous or unreasonable, it would have been easier to stand my ground. But he wasn’t mean or demanding. He was perfect. They were both perfect. Their kindness and love was perfect. It was everything I needed, except all the love and kindness in the world hadn’t prevented my brother’s blood clot. As much as I wanted it from them, as much as I’d started settling into the warmth of our family life together, I could see now where all that warmth led to.
I’d gotten comfortable being away from Pedro. I’d gotten more comfortable than I’d probably ever been in my entire life, and because of that, my brother had almost died by himself without anyone here for him.
Familia, Oliver said. And I believed it. I wanted it to be true. I wanted to be a family with them. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t want to be with them. The problem was that I wanted to be with them too much.
The time with them had been like a dream, but Pedro had shown me it was definitely time to wake up.
For the first time in weeks, I put my two hospital chairs together, arranged some of the spare sheets we had on hand into a kind of mattress and pillow, and curled myself up between the seats.
This wasn’t anything like Mitch and Oliver’s bed. Mitch liked his pillows and good sheets and his soft mattress, and I had unquestionably seen the appeal once I’d started sleeping over. This was cold, hard, and uncomfortable. But there was nothing for it. This was reality.
Eating on a regular schedule at Mitch and Oliver’s house had als
o given me more of a normal appetite than I’d had in years. So, after I’d climbed into my makeshift bed I reached for the haul I’d brought up with me from the vending machines.
Dinner tonight was going to be a three-course meal with a packet of salted peanuts as an appetizer, two granola bars and a bag of chips as the main course, and a box of raisins for dessert. I forced myself to eat as I sat in the dark room, saying nothing, doing nothing, feeling almost nothing, just watching the heartbeat on Pedro’s monitor until my eyelids got heavy and I passed out for the night.
I woke up with a start a few times and tried to groggily check on Pedro a couple of times throughout the evening. I think I must have fallen asleep for good toward the early morning hours, though, since the next time I woke up, sunlight was streaming into the room and I could hear hushed voices and movement around me.
“You’re going to wake him up,” a voice whispered.
“Good, he needs to wake up. I don’t see how he can sleep curled up like that.”
“Shhh. He needs to rest.”
“Don’t shush me. I know. I want him to come home so maybe he can rest there instead of—”
I interrupted the very quiet argument with a groan as I threw my hands up to block out the sun. I squinted my eyes tightly shut at first, but as I opened them little by little, Mitch and Oliver came into view, looking down at me.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” Mitch said quietly but cheerfully.
“Up. Up, up, you,” Oliver grumbled, but I knew him well enough I could tell he wasn’t actually annoyed and was just trying to kid with me.
I groaned again at the light, at the ache in my muscles that sleeping in the chair had given me, and at the disruption to the little sleep I’d gotten. I covered my eyes, but it was pretty clear I was already too awake to try to go back to sleep, even if I had been alone in the room, which I wasn’t. So I gave up and blinked blearily up at Mitch and Oliver. Actually, just Oliver. Mitch was suddenly nowhere to be seen, but Oliver was still looking down at me.
“How long have y’all been here?” I asked with another groan, which then turned into a yawn.
“Not too long,” Oliver said. “How long have you been asleep?”
“Not very long, I reckon,” I said, using my feet to push the chair that supported my legs away from me. I unwrapped the thin sheet I was using as a blanket and tossed it to the side in some kind of effort to look less like a homeless person camping out in the hospital room and more like I was just sitting in a chair by my brother’s bedside, like a normal person.
“And you’ve slept like this for three years? Here?” Oliver said, standing up straight and letting his eyes wander around the room like he was trying to piece together what the last three years had been like for me.
“Yeah,” I said, kind of absentmindedly. “Where’s Mitch?”
Oliver shrugged. “Charming the pants off the nurses, probably. He’s trying to find somewhere to microwave—”
“Breakfast!” Mitch called, as he let himself back into the room. He was carrying some kind of plastic container that was piping hot and smelled amazing even from where I sat. Mitch handed me the bowl that held a stack of pancakes and strips of bacon, and started rifling through a plastic bag, pulling out smaller containers of butter and syrup.
“Thank you!” I said greedily through a mouthful of hot pancake I’d immediately cut into as soon as the bowl was in my hands. The vending machine dinner had been unsatisfying, and I’d woken up starving.
Mitch must have known better than to try to make conversation while I was wolfing my breakfast down, so he sat opposite me while Oliver drifted closer to Pedro’s bedside. I watched Oliver get close enough so he could get a good look at Pedro’s face. It wasn’t until right then that I remembered this was Oliver’s first time laying eyes on my brother, on his baby’s uncle. I could also kind of tell by Oliver’s serious, anxious expression that, though he was literally looking down at my brother, Oliver probably felt, on some level, he was seeing Rich again after all this time.
I turned my head to look at Mitch and noticed he was carefully watching Oliver, too. Hell, maybe he was thinking the same thing about Oliver that I was.
“Oliver,” Mitch carefully said, like he was about to ask Oliver how he was doing. Before Mitch could finish his sentence though, Oliver snapped his head up like he had just come out of a trance.
“How’s breakfast?” he asked casually as he tried to appear like nothing had happened.
“Awesome,” I answered. “But, also not the only reason you’re here, if I had to guess.”
“Of course not,” Mitch said, cutting in quickly. “I mean, we wanted to literally bring you breakfast. But I didn’t see you all day yesterday. We wanted to check in on you and Pedro. And…”
Mitch bounced his leg up and down with excitement a few times. He traded glances with Oliver, who still seemed sort of lost in his own thoughts, but who nodded at Mitch like he was encouraging him.
“Well… We also wanted to let you know that—and I’m sure we eventually have some talking to do about where you and Oliver left things off last night—regardless of where you are with us and with our relationship going forward and all that, you’re still the baby’s father. And we haven’t changed our minds about what we said, so assuming you want to be present in the baby’s life, we wanted to let you know the ultrasound is coming up soon. And you’re invited, of course. If you want to see him. Or, her.”
“They said it’d be a week from tomorrow, so you have plenty of time,” Oliver said, leaning up against a wall. “To plan, you know. If you want someone to sit with him while you go. If you want to go.”
“But we thought you would. Want to go, that is,” Mitch added.
Did I want to go? Yeah, I wanted to go. Of course I wanted to go. That was a thing, right? Baby’s first picture? You were supposed to put that on your fridge and in the baby book and all of that. That’s how they could tell whether the baby was developing normally so far, so of course it was very important to be there for the baby. And Mitch and Oliver.
But my eyes strayed on their own to Pedro, and suddenly what seemed like an easy decision wasn’t easy anymore. It should have been obvious to agree to go to Mitch’s first ultrasound, but if I went, then nobody was going to sit here with Pedro. He was going to be by himself again. That’s exactly when he would throw another clot, they’d rush him to surgery, and once again I will have failed to be here when he needed me.
The baby needed me, but the baby had Mitch and Oliver. Pedro needed someone, and that was me. That was it. Everything else was just playing family with people who didn’t really need me as much as Pedro did.
“Well, actually. I should stay here. With Pedro, you know? Just in case. But let me know how it goes, right? If they say anything bad is happening, or good. Whatever,” I said, trying to sound like this was a compromise.
Mitch and Oliver looked at each other like they did when they were checking to see if they were both on the same page.
“What?” I asked impatiently. Usually, I thought it was sort of cool to watch them sync up like that, but now I felt like they were probably syncing up to give me grief about not going.
“Okay… Um? Marcos?” Mitch still looked at Oliver before turning to face me like he was going to deliver bad news. “We get it, and Oliver especially gets it, of course. We’ve been talking more about what he went through with Rich, and I think it’s easy for you both to understand each other on this level. So, if you don’t want to come, like I said, we’re alright with that.”
“But?” I said, supplying the rest of his sentence, the part he hadn’t said yet.
“But,” Mitch said, acknowledging there was a “but” in that statement. “But… And let me explain first. This doesn’t change things. It’s not like a ransom situation. I would have still come talk to your mami when you needed me to, and I would have still pretended we’re getting married. All of that. But… Does this mean you’ve changed your mind? About�
�”
“We thought you were taking a break from us, he means,” Oliver said. “We didn’t figure the break would be from the baby, too.”
“I’m… Look, I just can’t leave Pedro.”
“Okay, so we’re back to that,” Oliver said, flatly.
“Yes, that’s the whole reason we started doing this. For Pedro. It’s kind of counter to the point of this whole thing if we did all of this to give him a fighting chance, and then I’m not even here when he needs me!”
“How is you skipping the appointment going to make a difference? What does you being here have to do with him surviving another clot? And also, by ‘this whole thing,’ do you mean…the baby? ‘This whole thing’ is the baby?” Oliver asked, talking faster than he normally did, gearing up for an argument, an argument I was ready to have.
“Look, dude. From everything you’ve said, Rich was in the hospital, but he wasn’t like this, okay? He could talk. He could ask for help. It’s different. You don’t get it. My brother needs—”
“No, he doesn’t, Marcos. He needs his doctors. Your being here—”
“Well, fine. The same thing applies. You’re gonna get the ultrasound anyway, so who cares if I—”
“Stop it!” Mitch said, standing quickly and blinking even more quickly.
Shit. Now it was my turn to look at Oliver and make sure we were on the same page. We’d made Mitch cry. One of us had made him cry, anyway.
“It’s alright if you don’t want to come, Marcos. We can always catch up later. Excuse me,” Mitch said as he brushed past us, crossed the room in two strides, and left.
“Goddamnit,” Oliver swore under his breath as he crossed his arms and sulked.
“Nah, it wasn’t you.” I shook my head. “I was a dick. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“No, I shouldn’t have made it seem like you being here is pointless. I know it doesn’t feel pointless, and that you’re halfway here for your peace of mind. I understand that. I mean, that part at least,” Oliver said, shaking his head. Shaking his head at himself, it looked like. He was obviously unhappy that Mitch was upset.