Chapter 14 Patricia
Patricia
Iwake up on the floor of my garage. It’s light out.
It must be Saturday morning. After realizing that Nash may or may not be trying to frame me for Alessandra’s murder, I guess I collapsed and passed out.
I may be overwhelmed by everything that happened last night.
Or perhaps Emma was right and I have a concussion and that’s why I lost consciousness—it’s one of the symptoms.
I need to shake this cloud out of my head. I need to be able to think. I need to figure out what to do.
With some difficulty, I get up. I manage to stumble into the house, and after poking my head in every room I find out that my brother isn’t here and it seems like he hasn’t come back home yet.
I have to put together a plan of action. Because action must be taken.
After a hot shower (and getting water all over the bathroom because there’s no curtain), I reach for my towel and dry myself off.
When I step out of the shower, I almost pass out again.
This is getting bad. I think I actually have to go to the hospital.
But in my condition, I probably shouldn’t drive.
I manage to make it to my bedroom. My alarm clock says it’s 7:30 a.m. Oscar and Victor won’t be here for another two hours.
I could try to call Oscar on my home phone, but I know he’s not up this early on Saturday.
Neither is Victor. I’m actually surprised that he said he was coming over at 9:30 a.m. On weekends, those bitches are dead to the world until at least noon.
They’re almost as bad as I am. Well, actually, no one is as bad as I am when it comes to oversleeping.
I sleep a lot. Maybe too much. But there are other things to worry about right now.
Since the hospital is just a few miles from here, I decide to walk.
After about forty-five minutes (I don’t know exactly because of my dead phone), I reach Point Liberty Memorial Hospital. I follow the signs to the emergency room.
An old man with big glasses at the reception desk asks me why I’m here.
“I hit my head last night, and I think I might have a concussion,” I tell him.
“Fill these out.” He pushes a clipboard toward me. “It’ll be a while before anyone can see you.”
“How long?”
“An hour. Maybe two.”
“But I’ve been passing out. I think I really need to see someone as soon as possible.”
He doesn’t bother to look up from his computer screen. “That is as soon as possible.”
He points to the waiting area behind me.
I look, and I’m surprised to see so many seats taken this early on a Saturday morning.
He continues, still without looking: “That man severed his finger while cooking. That woman broke her ankle when she fell off a balcony, drunk. And that baby has a fever in the hundreds. You? You can wait.”
I take the clipboard and sit down. After filling out the forms, I return them to the old man.
I wait.
After about an hour of me just staring at the wall and obsessing over the terrible things that happened yesterday, a tall nurse with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, in her thirties, approaches me.
I think it’s my turn, but she gives me this odd look, like a big smile, which seems inappropriate and unprofessional for an emergency room.
“Hunter?” She can’t stop smiling.
“Yes.”
She doesn’t say anything else. She just stands there, waiting for me to say something back.
I stare at her.
Her shoulders slump a bit. “Oh, my God, you don’t remember me.”
Then, all of a sudden, it hits me. It’s my cousin Patricia. She’s the daughter of my Aunt Doreen (my mother’s older sister). Patricia is one of my (probably gay?) relatives who I see at family functions and who gets whispered about by the other family members.
Patricia used to babysit Nash and me when we were little.
I remember her coming over a lot when I was in elementary school and she was still in her twenties.
I had so much fun with her. I always thought she was the coolest person because she could talk with me about anything that I happened to be interested in at the time: dinosaurs, Star Wars movies, the Olympics.
And she displayed affection towards me in ways my mother, father, and brother never did.
Patricia never underestimated the comfort that can come from a reassuring pat on the back, a gentle touch on the arm, a hug.
But sometime in the middle of third grade, she suddenly stopped coming to the house, stopped babysitting us. She was replaced by some other girl that my parents hired from an agency or something.
When I asked my mother what happened to Patricia, I was told that she got too busy with other things. This made me quite sad at the age of nine—not so much because she got busy, but because she never said goodbye.
I also stopped seeing her at family gatherings for years, for almost a decade actually.
It’s only within the last year or so that she’s shown up at a couple funerals (Grandma Muriel and Grandpa Brody).
She came with her roommate, Jo, who, if the rumors are true, isn’t really a roommate.
And she didn’t really talk to me, except for a quick hello.
“Patricia,” I say. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” she smirks. Then, with genuine concern, she asks, “Why are you here?”
“I banged my head on my nightstand, and I passed out a couple times, and I had to walk almost an hour to get here, and I’ve been waiting another hour.”
Patricia pats my shoulder. “Come with me.”
She leads me out of the waiting room, down a hallway, and into a patient room. She examines me carefully.
“Does your head hurt?” she asks.
“Not at all.”
“Well, the injury on your head doesn’t look all that bad. But I won’t rule out a concussion. I’ll arrange a CT scan for you. I wonder if the passing out is just a combination of the original injury and also something stress-related. Have you been stressed out lately?”
“Yeah. Very much.”
“That might be it then. Try to relax. Meditation, breathing exercises: they can help. Look some up on YouTube.”
Patricia re-dresses the wound on my head because the bandage wasn’t on properly.
“Thank you,” I say.
She opens the door. I hop off the patient bed.
“I’ve really missed you, Hunter,” Patricia says, a tinge of sadness in her voice.
“Hey,” I say, “I’ve always wondered: why did you stop babysitting me and Nash?”
Patricia’s eyes well up with tears.
I panic a bit. “Oh, hey, I’m sorry I asked that. I didn’t mean to ask that.”
“No, it’s okay.”
Patricia closes the door again. I sit back down on the bed. She takes a seat in the chair. We look at each other.
“I loved you and Nash so much. I really did. Still do.” She nods. “Babysitting you guys didn’t feel like a job at all. I always looked forward to coming over. It was nice to connect with family, especially since my own mother and father weren’t always the kindest people.”
She looks like she’s unsure whether she should continue.
She thinks. She decides to go ahead. She braces herself.
Then: “When I was twenty-four, I came out. Of the closet. I’m gay.
This was back when you were like eight or nine years old.
And word travels fast in our family. You know that.
It got back to your parents real quick. And to them, that wasn’t the kind of news that was celebrated.
It was the kind of news that worried people, that disgusted people, that scared people.
And I don’t mean to talk bad about your parents or anything, but I was forbidden to set foot inside your house ever again.
My parents weren’t any better. Kicked me out of the house.
Didn’t speak to them for years. It was only the last couple years that we kind of reconnected at funerals.
I mean, I’m never invited to weddings any more.
But they can’t stop me from coming to a funeral.
And even if my parents and most of the family don’t accept me, I’m going to show up to things.
Because I refuse to be an invisible family member anymore.
I’m as much a part of this family as anybody. ”
Somber silence.
Then, Patricia asks, “What did your parents tell you happened to me?”
I shake my head. “They didn’t tell me anything. Only that you were too busy to babysit any more. And I was young. I was confused. I actually thought . . . No.”
“What?”
“It was so stupid, but I was just a kid. I actually thought that you didn’t like us any more. I thought you didn’t love us any more.”
Patricia is now crying quietly. I’m trying to hold back tears.
I continue: “And it was really hard because you were the only person in our entire family that showed me any kind of affection. I mean, you know my mom and dad and brother. We’re not a touchy-feely kind of family.
We don’t say I love you to each other. We don’t hug.
We don’t anything. You brought so much warmth into my life.
You made me see what a family was supposed to be. And then one day, you were gone.”
Patricia wraps her arms around me, and I cry into her shoulder.
“I’ve thought so much about you over the years, Hunter.
I’ve been waiting for you to get out of high school and move out of the house, so that I could reconnect with you.
I would’ve tried sooner, but I didn’t want to cause you any trouble, especially when you were still under your parents’ roof.
I mean, the last couple of funerals, I tried to talk to you, but your parents would give me dirty looks to shoo me away.
And I didn’t want to rock the boat. So I felt I had to leave you alone.
Maybe I should’ve tried harder. Forgive me. Please forgive me.”
“There’s nothing to forgive. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t.”
Then, her voice trembling, she says, “Hunter. You know why I think about you, right? You know why I worry about you, right? You know why I feel so connected to you, right?”
At first, I have no idea what she’s talking about. I lean back and look into her kind eyes, and all of a sudden I realize . . . she knows. She knows that I am gay. She knows that I struggle with this. She knows who I really am.
I want to say the words out loud: “I’m gay.” But I can’t bring myself to do it. I don’t know why.
Here is a woman who loves me, who knows the truth. Why can’t I say the words?
I continue to sit on the bed, my head down, my tears falling.
“Are you happy, Patricia?” I ask.
Patricia smiles, and it cuts through all the sorrow.
“I am. I really am. I mean, I’m a nurse practitioner, and I love my job because I love helping people.
I’ve been married to an amazing woman named Jo for five years now.
She’s an architect, but she’s taking some time off because she’s pregnant with our baby.
You may have seen Jo with me at those funerals. ”
She takes hold of my hand. I squeeze.
Then, she says, “And what about you, Hunter? Are you happy?”
I think about this question for what seems like a very long time. Silence, followed by more silence, followed by even more silence.
Then, I shake my head “no.”
That survival knife that’s in the bottom drawer of my desk .
. . So many nights, over many years time, ever since middle school, ever since I was burdened with the knowledge that I am gay and that I didn’t know how to deal with it, so many nights, I have held the blade of that survival knife to my throat.
I don’t know how serious I ever was about actually slicing my neck open.
But I would be lying if I didn’t admit that sometimes I want to die.
I don’t share those feelings with anybody.
I don’t even dwell on them myself. As soon as those thoughts come up, I stuff them down as best I can.
I mean, I feel ashamed to even have those feelings.
From the outside, my life is great. I live in a nice house, I have money, I have friends, I have so much when others have so little.
Who am I to feel bad about myself? Who am I to complain?
I don’t deserve to be sad, I think to myself.
So I stuff those feelings, I stuff those feelings, I stuff those feelings down.
But once in a while, I’m not successful, and I press that knife against my skin. I draw blood. I force myself to stop. And the next day, I wear a collared shirt that I button all the way to the top to hide the mark on my neck. The mark that would show everyone how much I hurt inside.
And as if she can see into my mind, as if she can read my thoughts, Patricia gives me the warmest embrace I have ever felt. She holds me tight, allowing me to cry all I want.
“Forget your parents,” she says. “If I want to hang out with you, I’m going to hang out with you.”
I feel as if I could live in this embrace forever.
But then, I crash back into the reality that is my life, and I ask, sincerely, softly, “Why do I hate myself so much?”
“Oh, honey,” says Patricia, leaning back and looking me in the eyes. “That’s not hate. That’s just love taking a nap. And you and me? Together? Together we’re going to wake it the fuck up.”