Chapter 4 Rip
FOUR
Rip
Carrie once told me my eyes are kind, but they’re Marion Brennan’s eyes.
They can be menacing too. I see that same menace in Connor’s gaze when I return to his hospital room three hours after Tristan packed a duffel bag and left the house.
My brother’s expression cuts me off at the knees before he even opens his mouth.
After a deep breath, I ask, “How are you feeling?”
Connor regards me with a dull, dry expression. “Incredible. Like I could run a marathon.” He looks down at the book he’s holding and starts tracing the letters on the cover with his finger. When he turns his hand a certain way, he reveals a deep gash on his palm. It must burn like hell.
I sit in a chair not too near the bed. While the ICU room catered to guests staying overnight, the standard hospital room he’s now in is the same as any other I was in and out of as a child.
Bed, window, two chairs, bedside table, jug of water.
On the wall by the door there’s a scale for pain.
From zero to ten. If you were to get confused about quantifying your pain with a number, there’s a helpful set of smiley faces to assist you.
The first smiley face, under the zero, is your basic smiley face.
The sixth has a frown, and the tenth is an inconsolable frown with tears.
If I had to guess at a twelve, it would resemble Munch’s “The Scream.” That’s about where I’m at right now.
I clear my throat to remind myself I have a voice.
A voice I found a long time ago. “Do you have a plan for when you leave here?” I don’t know if he knows I’ve already spoken to Tristan about this.
On the off chance it would piss him off even more to know I did, I play the oblivious estranged brother card.
He says nothing, continuing to trace the letters on his book.
“Connor?”
He takes a deep breath and levels his eyes at me, flattening me with his glare. “I expected you to take the money and run.”
I swallow hard.
“You don't have to call or show up for six years, and you still get everything. Well done. How's it feel?”
I drop my head so he won’t see the shame and uselessness on my face.
If I really am all he has left, you’d think there would be at least a glimmer of warmth.
I know he has it in him somewhere. He used to be a really sweet kid.
But I am all too familiar with the woman I left him with.
He might have been a little too sweet. Too soft.
My brother has every right to hate me, and I shouldn’t be surprised that his sweetness is withered and dead along with everything else.
I see in him what I tried so hard not to let my mother see in me.
The parts of him that my mother would have scorned in full.
I hid mine, but he wears his like its own kind of armor.
“I’m not trying to make you angry—”
He zeroes in on me with complete contempt. “Who the hell are you? I mean, seriously, who do you think you are to come in here and pawn me off on the psychiatry department then ask me what my plans are? Why did you even come here? For what?”
I let his words push me back in the chair. My voice comes out low and uncertain. “Just to waste your precious time, I guess.”
“Answer the question.”
His hatred and my rising anxiety snap me in half. “What? Why did I come back? I guess if you had gotten a call in the middle of your lunch break about how I’d been critically injured in a car wreck, you would have just said, 'That sucks' and gone back to work.”
“You're such a saint.” His words are acid. “Who called you anyway?”
“Who cares?”
“I do. Who called you? Who knew where you were? Who had your phone number?”
Helen. “A lawyer called me. He got my number from West’s mom, not that it makes any fucking difference.”
Connor’s eyes narrow. “Well, let me ask you this, then. If you were to have been critically injured in a car wreck, wherever you were, assuming you even have a car, who would have gotten in touch with us?”
“What's your point?”
“Did anyone know who your family was?”
“I'm sure someone would have figured it out. It's not like I was in witness protection.” I rub my face with both hands, trying to channel some of my irritation. “Look, Connor, can we start over? What’s your plan?”
He sighs and throws his book toward the foot of his bed. “I just wanna go home.”
He sees me bite down on my response and glares at me. “Is that a problem?”
“Well, you can't stay there forever.”
“Why not? You already put it on the market?”
“No—”
“But first thing in the morning, right?” he asks, his words abrupt, harsh.
I will myself not to react. I can’t let what I’m feeling show on my face—all the regret, all the fear, rising up like a dark storm inside me, out of context and yet much too familiar.
I take a deep breath and try to backtrack to where this reunion went wrong.
“Look. I'm sorry about leaving the other day.
I didn't know what to do when you got so upset. I figure this is all pretty hard on you.”
He laughs. It’s an evil, demonic-type laugh that sends chills down my spine. He gives me a look that makes my balls shrivel. “But not you, right? Just another kink in all your plans for freedom?”
That doesn’t feel entirely fair. “Connor, I never wanted to be free from you. None of this was ever about you—”
“Oh, I know that,” he snaps. “I didn't factor in at all. Which is why I can't figure out why you're here now—when I’m all that's left, and I never meant a thing.”
“That's not true—”
“You didn't even tell me goodbye,” he shouts.
“I was eighteen.” I glance at the door to make sure no one is coming after hearing us yell.
I lean in and lower my voice. “Do you really think I thought about anything more than a week in advance? Do you think I planned to stay in Seattle for six years?” This is a stupid conversation to have with someone who is, in fact, eighteen, but it was the same excuse I gave West, and no one’s entitled to the truth truth.
“Seattle?” He looks shaken for a moment. His eyes cloud over with tears, before he clenches his jaw and says, “No. I think you planned to stay forever.”
“Well, I guess we'll never know.”
He swallows, making it look like swallowing is one of the hardest things in the world. “Does that mean you're staying?”
“Connor…”
Two tears slip down his cheeks, and he stares at his scraped up hands. For a moment, he looks as helpless as I feel, but beyond the helplessness, there’s hurt. The damage I did.
None of what happened was his fault. He doesn’t deserve my cold indifference.
He didn’t put it there. It doesn’t belong to him.
“I'm sorry for everything. I’m sorry I left without saying goodbye. I didn’t say goodbye to anyone.
It wasn’t just you, but you’re right. You deserved better. More than just an overdue apology.”
He wipes away his tears. “So now what?”
“When are they gonna let you go?” I ask.
Our eyes meet, and I can see the effort he’s making not to cry.
It’s Herculean. His thin body trembles with the force of his will.
The words I wish I could say get hung up in my throat—that everything will be okay, that we can make things work.
That I can take care of him, and he doesn’t have to worry about anything anymore.
But I can’t bring myself to say any of it. It’s all a pack of lies.
“I don’t know,” he says.
“Did you want me to ask somebody?”
He rolls his eyes and shakes his head like he’s done with this conversation and me.
“Do you want me to go?”
He sucks his lower lip into his mouth, looks straight ahead, and nods.
Guess that’s my cue. “Well, call me…whenever you find out anything.”
“I don’t have your number,” he reminds me with a note of bitter derision.
I walk over to the white board in his room and pick up the eraser and the marker. I wipe off all the nurses’ names and phone extensions—all the instructions for incentive spirometry and goals for the day, and I write my phone number in big blue digits across the whole thing.
When I turn back to him, my eyes settle on his stoic face. “Helen Miles found me because she looked.”
I get a text later while I’m watching the Mariners game. My first thought is of West, which is a weird first thought to have because, as he explained, we haven’t heard from each other in years. It’s probably the baseball game that makes me think of him.
More bizarre is the actual text. It’s from Connor. The first one he’s ever sent me.
They’re discharging me in the morning. Tristan thought I should let you know and give you the chance to bring me home. If you’re even still in town.
There are a lot of potential replies I toy with, but bearing in mind my own conversation with Tristan, the one I send is I’ll see you in the morning then.
It’s a huge relief that Connor is alone in his room when I arrive. I’ve made myself as presentable as possible just in case Tristan is with him, but I’m glad he isn’t. I’d rather not have any witnesses to this interaction with my brother in case it takes another bad turn.
“Hey, stranger,” he says when I come in. It isn’t nice the way he says it. I brace myself and try to put my inner asshole in check.
“You all set?” I ask.
“Yeah. Just waiting.”
I ignore the dig and pick up his duffel bag. I notice the wheelchair near his bed. “Is somebody coming to help you?”
He presses his lips together, and he glares up at me. “I thought you were here to help me.”
I stare hard at him, sure he’s screwing with me.
But he just sits there with his hands in his lap. Waiting.
“You can’t get up?” Please, God, don’t tell me he’s paralyzed for life.
He throws the covers off, and I stare at the bandage around his entire right thigh. “What is that?” I don’t know why I say that. It sounds so absurd the second it leaves my mouth. My only excuse is my brain’s not working as well as it should be.
He breathes very deliberately like he’s trying to keep from shouting at me. “This is how I almost died.”