Chapter Twenty-Nine
Connor sat beside his father’s bed in the ICU and listened to the beeps and hums of the machines pumping air into his dad’s failing lungs.
His mother sat in the chair next to him, motionless.
Connor’s body felt like a hunk of metal, cold and unfeeling yet capable of manipulating its limbs in a way that vaguely resembled a human being.
He reached over and took his mother’s hand. “Are you okay, Mom?”
She looked at him with a sad smile. “Whatever happens, we’ll get through this.”
With all the practicalities that had occupied his mind since his mom had called from the ambulance on the way to the hospital—medical insurance and advance directives and the jobs he had lined up for that afternoon—he hadn’t given much thought to what it was they would get through.
“What about you, honey?” she asked. “Are you all right?”
Connor stared back at her. The question floored him. He couldn’t bring himself to answer. He wasn’t all right. Not in the slightest.
“I’m seeing someone,” he blurted instead.
His mother blinked in surprise.
“Or I was. Not anymore. It’s Sam—was Sam. Bryant.”
Connor let go of her hand and gripped his knees.
He fixed his eyes on the linoleum beneath his feet and felt like he was about to be sick.
He couldn’t look at his mother. He was too afraid of what he might see.
Then he heard the chair beside him creak, and his mom reached out and once again took his hand in hers.
“I’m so happy you told me,” she said in a strained voice.
He glanced up and saw tears gathering in her eyes. “I wanted to tell Dad,” Connor choked. “I should have told him, but I left it too late.”
His mother embraced him, and he pressed his face into her shoulder, all the guilt and regret bubbling to the surface. He was ashamed of himself. And now he would have to spend the rest of his life knowing he hadn’t made things right.
“He may have had some idea,” his mother whispered.
Connor lurched back in astonishment. “What?” He remembered the panic he’d felt returning home from school that day and seeing his journal on the table. “Did he read it—the journal?”
His mother’s forehead creased. “What journal?”
“The one I left in Dad’s van, back at school.”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember a journal. But we talked about it once briefly—he and I. Only speculation, of course. We were just trying to fill in the gaps and answer our own questions. You give us so little, Connor. You’re so careful with what you share about your life.”
Because I was living two of them. Connor’s lungs emptied. All this time. They had wasted all this time doing their little dance of pretend. And because of that, Connor had lost the best thing that had ever happened to him.
“Why didn’t you say something?” he snapped, standing up from his seat, furious. “Do you know how long I’ve been agonizing over this?”
His mother’s breath caught. “I didn’t think it was our place. I wanted you to be ready to tell us—”
“Ready? How could I ever have felt ready with the way he talked to me?”
She nodded, and her mouth formed a grim line. “I think he was so hard on you because he was worried you’d have a tough life. When you were young, you were such a sensitive boy. He thought it would make you stronger, more resilient.”
“That’s messed up,” Connor rasped.
“You’re right. It wasn’t the best way, but it was his way.
Your dad... struggled with a lot. He didn’t have a father growing up, and he didn’t know how to deal with you.
We tried for other children, but it never worked out.
He put so much onto you. His only son.” She wiped away fresh tears with the back of her hand.
“I don’t know, Connor. I don’t know how we should have done this.
I thought surely you’d tell us, but when that never happened, I assumed we were just reading into things.
And I think, if we’re being honest, part of him didn’t want it to be true.
So not dealing with it was his way of avoiding what he found difficult to face. ”
“I’m his son!” Connor cried. “How difficult is it to face your own son?” But then, hadn’t he been unable to face his own father?
His mom bowed her head, no longer bothering to wipe her tears. “We did the wrong thing, didn’t we? We did it wrong.”
Tears pricked Connor’s eyes. “No, Mom, you didn’t do anything wrong.” He looked over at his father fighting to breathe, his life reduced to the steady blip on the monitor standing by his bed. “I just wish I could’ve told him myself.”
“You still can. He’s not gone yet,” his mother said softly. “And he loves you, Connor. Even if he’s terrible at showing it.”
Connor swiped a hand across his eyes, holding back a sob. “I think I need some air,” he said and bolted out of the room. He strode down the hallway toward the waiting room, feeling like someone had smacked him in the face. His thoughts were muddled and racing, and nothing made sense.
When he opened the door and stepped into the waiting room, his eyes caught a familiar brown, and the next thing he knew, Sam had him wrapped tightly in a hug and was pressing his face, wet with tears, into Connor’s neck.
Connor grabbed the back of Sam’s jacket for dear life.
He hadn’t realized how deep he was sinking until he felt those familiar arms around him, pulling him up.
“I’m so sorry,” Sam murmured. “I’m so sorry about your dad.”
Connor took a shuddering breath and squeezed him hard. When they drew apart, Sam brushed his tears away with his sleeve.
“I thought you were leaving town,” Connor managed in a shaky voice.
“I, um, decided to stay a bit longer.”
“Will you sit with me?” Connor asked hoarsely, suddenly unable to face the prospect of the next hour, let alone the next minute, without Sam by his side.
“Of course.” Sam took Connor’s arm and led him to a set of chairs in the corner of the room. They sat, and Sam placed Connor’s hand between his own, soft and warm. “What happened?”
“The doctors said the disease must have weakened the muscles in his throat, which affects his ability to swallow and increases the chances of aspiration—food slipping into his lungs.” Connor repeated what the hospital staff had told him after finding his mother frantic in the ED.
“It could have been going on for days, but he didn’t say anything.
He didn’t even mention it to my mom or his specialist.” Connor was angry, thinking of how infuriatingly stoic his father could be.
“By the time it got bad enough that he was having trouble breathing, my mom called the ambulance, and they brought him here. The infection had already progressed to pneumonia, so he was intubated and put in a coma. They’re hoping it will give his body a chance to fight the infection, but they said he could deteriorate quickly.
” He looked over at Sam, who was observing him silently.
“You did your best,” Sam said. “You both did your best.”
Connor nodded, not because he agreed but because it was the right thing to do. The truth was, he hadn’t done his best. Not by a long shot.
Despite having lived with his illness for almost a decade, Connor’s father had remained cryptic about the eventual realities of the disease.
His mother had told Connor there was a will—thank God—but all the rest, funeral wishes and service requests, he’d never spoken with her about.
If Connor were to hazard a guess, his father’s inability to prepare for death was indicative of how unwilling he was to confront it.
But all of them had been unwilling to confront it.
Connor had dragged his feet about telling him because he thought he had the luxury of time, that his dad would be around forever.
And now, he faced having to spend the rest of his life wondering whether things would have been different.
“He’s going to be okay, right?” Connor asked weakly as if Sam himself had the power to determine the outcome. “He’s not going to die?”
Sam pressed his lips together before answering. “We’re going to stay hopeful until we know any different.” He shifted then rose slightly from his seat, and Connor gripped his hand.
“Don’t go,” Connor blurted.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Sam said, squeezing his hand. He pulled his phone from his back pocket and sat down again. “I cracked a screen sitting on it once.”
Connor let out a short laugh. “Thank you.”
Sam smiled and shook his head. “There’s nothing to thank me for.”
Sam stood by the taxi stand outside the hospital and took a furtive drag on the cigarette he’d bummed off a nearby cab driver.
Ian had been admitted late that morning, and it was now well after midnight with no change to his condition.
Connor had told Sam the doctors thought keeping Ian in a coma would give him the best chance of fighting the infection, and when he was through the worst of it, they’d wake him up.
But there hadn’t been any evidence of improvement yet, so they waited.
Sam had ducked away to use the bathroom only to be struck by the unmistakable urge for a smoke.
It usually came on when he was overwhelmed, a niggling feeling that grew and grew, overtaking all rational thought.
He was hesitant to leave Connor on his own in the waiting room, but he also couldn’t risk turning into a basket case—Connor needed him to be strong.
Hopefully, he wouldn’t mind if Sam was a little late getting back.
As though the thought had conjured him, Connor appeared beside Sam and plucked the cigarette from his mouth. He brought it to his own then took a long drag and exhaled through his teeth.
“Don’t tell me I just made you fall off the wagon,” Sam said, swallowing a kernel of guilt.
“Sometimes life’s determined to throw you off.”
Sam studied the dark smudges under Connor’s eyes and the lines etched across his forehead. He recalled the way Connor had crushed him to his chest when Sam first arrived at the hospital. “How are you doing?”
Connor shook his head and stared out at a car driving by on the street. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“I understand.”
They stood in silence, passing the cigarette back and forth until it burned down to a stub in Sam’s fingers.
“About a year ago, I started having panic attacks,” Sam said quietly into the night air.
“This heavy, choking feeling would come over me, and it was like I lost all control. On the surface, my life was going so well. I had this great job; I’d met someone new.
Everything was working, but at the same time, nothing was.
” Sam pressed the cigarette butt out on the side of a nearby receptacle and tossed it inside.
“Fast-forward to this summer, when I had a full-blown nervous breakdown.” He glanced over at Connor to gauge his reaction.
Connor was looking at him, his eyebrows pulled together in concern.
“I stopped showing up at work, stopped eating. I barely left my bed. For a moment, there, I thought I wouldn’t mind if I just went to sleep and never woke up.
” Sam dropped his gaze and took a shaky breath.
“Someone from HR ended up calling in a welfare check, and the cops came by my apartment. They made me call my parents. It was humiliating, my mom and dad showing up and seeing me like that. After all the lies I’d told them about how well I was doing.
It’s funny. All that time trying to get away from this place and find my chosen family, and it was my actual family that cared enough to intervene.
” He scuffed the toe of his shoe against the pavement.
“Anyway, I don’t want to dump this on you with everything that’s happening with your dad.
The truth is, I feel better than I have in a long time.
I’m on some better meds, and it’s amazing what leaving a toxic workplace and an emotionally abusive douchebag can do for one’s mental health.
I just wanted to come clean about why I ended up back here.
I didn’t want to keep hiding how screwed up I am. ”
Beside him, Connor shifted on the balls of his feet. “I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything,” Sam said quickly.
“No,” Connor cut in. “I mean, it hurts to know how much you’ve been hurting. And I don’t think you’re screwed up. Not at all. I’m sorry things have been so bad.”
“Not lately,” Sam said with a small smile. “I hope you know you’re mostly to blame.”
Connor pulled Sam to him and buried his face in his shoulder. “It’s like we’re all just teetering on the edge of some big disaster.”
Sam heard Connor’s breath hitch. The sight of him standing there in the waiting room, stunned and lost, had brought tears to Sam’s eyes. “It must have come as a real shock,” he said softly, stroking Connor’s back. “It all happened so suddenly.”
“I can’t believe I didn’t tell him,” Connor whispered, his voice constricting. “The whole thing seems so... stupid. Hiding who I am, for what? Now he could die never knowing the real me.”
Sam held Connor tight as he shuddered against him.
He felt the pain as if it were his own. “Let’s not go down that road just yet.
We’ll deal with whatever happens when it happens, okay?
” He didn’t know where this clarity was coming from, his feelings for Connor enabling him to tap into a strength he’d been unable to access for himself.
They stood like that for a long time until the cold snuck beneath Sam’s jacket and made him shiver.
Connor pulled away and fixed Sam with his steady blue eyes.
“I’m sorry things didn’t work out between us.
But I want you to know that I respect your decision.
You were right; you deserve someone who doesn’t expect you to compromise.
The last thing I want is to hold you back from being where you need to be. ”
Sam shook his head, and his heart gave a little lurch. “Right now, this is the only place I need to be.” Then, no longer able to suppress it, his face cracked into an enormous yawn.
Connor chuckled. “As much as I appreciate that, I think you should go home and get some sleep. It’s been a hellish day.”
Right on cue, Sam felt the full weight of his exhaustion. “But what about you?”
“I’ll stay on a little longer and check in with my mom. The doctor said he doesn’t expect any major changes tonight. He said it’s better for us to get some rest and come back tomorrow. They’ll call if there are any updates.”
“If you’re sure... but I’ll be here first thing in the morning.”
“You don’t have to do that, Sam.”
“I want to.” Sam took Connor’s hand and pressed his thumb into the man’s palm. “Let me.”
“Okay,” Connor said with a smile, relenting.