Chapter 52
Emmett
My heart is in my throat when Bobbie tells me about my mother’s diagnosis. And how disappointed she is that I disappeared on her. That she understands my situation but is hurt.
But does she understand like she said?
Funny how she was the one that sent me away but blames me for not telling her where the fuck I went. Going with Tristen was her idea.
I wish I hadn’t.
Maybe then I wouldn’t have this pressure sitting on my chest or this pain in my stomach or the goddamn picture of him stuck in my head. Fading behind the elevator doors.
Tears in his pretty brown eyes.
I don’t know that he’ll ever forgive me. That I’ll ever forgive myself.
I’m a monster.
A sick queer, just like Eric always said I was.
He knew all along what lived in his house, and I was just too stupid to realize it.
Too dense. Too weak.
Suck it back.
“Here you go, honey.”
The Styrofoam cup fills my watery vision and my stomach clenches at the thought of putting anything in it.
“No thanks,” I croak out and watch my aunt’s frame slump.
“Emmett, my sweet nephew,” she says too softly, and I tense up. “Please take it so we can talk about Char.”
I shake my head.
If I don’t talk about it … it can’t be real. Just some dream that I’ll wake up from, and I’ll be in the bed I’ve been sharing with two other men, and my side will be too warm.
Does he know he smiles in his sleep?
My stomach clenches and I push away my aunt’s hand.
“No, thank you.”
A heavy sigh comes from the woman I only ever see between these walls, her exhalation accented by the monitor hooked up to the wasting human I used to call a mother dying on the bed beside me.
It’s the first time I have seen my life-giver outside of the house since I was small.
“All right, fine. We’ll do this the hard way.” Bobbie crouches right there in front of me, her knees popping as she settles low enough to catch my gaze. “She’s going to be in and out but not for long. Sepsis; do you know what that is?”
The fabric over my knuckles tightens.
“I-infection.”
Bobbie nods and nods some more, her eyes filling with unshed tears.
“Her kidneys are too weak to withstand the antibiotics. She’s not stable enough for surgery.”
I cross my arms over my middle and hold myself tightly. “How?”
Something in my aunts face cracks open. “Her appendix burst, and she rejected the treatment. It was already too late when she got here.”
The shake of my head does nothing but displace the tears clinging to my lashes.
I want Tristen.
The thought just adds more to the collection on my face.
He’s not coming back.
I don’t deserve to have him back. Not that I ever really had him in the first place.
“Emmett. The insurance isn’t going to cover anything past what I can do for her here.” There’s a hitch to my aunt’s words. A thickness. “And I don’t have everything she needs.”
She buries her face in her hands; the burden of the truth she’s not saying out loud dangling thickly in the air between us.
But I already know. My mother is going to die.
“The infection is spreading, and I can’t stop it.”
I nod as I stare unseeing at the linoleum floor beside her, my throat too raw for words, my chest too tight for anything but short puffs.
I should feel … something, right? Something for the woman that brought me into this world?
Instead, I feel … nothing.
Not like I expected when Tristen showed up to bring me here. When he opened his mouth and said the words.
I knew one day, this would come.
And now that I see it … I can’t help that maybe I’m … relieved.
“Where’s Tristen?”
My aunt gnaws at her lip and sniffles as she stands, the clear regret radiating from her in waves.
“They’d—uh—just dropped off a patient before bringing you here. So, um—” the scrub of her face is audible, her steps uneven across the room, “—probably back out on the road.”
“What does he do out there?”
The surprised look she flings over the bed, my mother’s body breathing via machines between us, is all furrowed brows and bloodshot eyes. “He’s an EMT, sweetheart. Him and Hatley patch people up enough to get them here.”
“Oh.”
With a bouncing knee and a restlessness gathering in my veins, I grip the fabric covering my fists tighter.
Should I have known that?
“He didn’t tell you that?”
He just showed up one day and took me with him.
“I never thought to ask. He just smells like smoke sometimes when he comes home.” Home. My stomach twists up. “Do you think he’ll come back?”
It’s quiet off my lips, the words melding into the subtle beep of the monitor and the nearly silent crinkle of the packaging my aunt breaks open to administer meds for my mom.
I don’t know why she bothers if she’s dying.
“Why wouldn’t he?” she asks lightly.
More tears gather in my eyes.
Because I fucked it up.
I am unworthy of him and the things he does. The person he is. He’d be better if he never saw me again.
He saves people’s lives?
And I … cost them.
“Emmett, why wouldn’t he come back?”
Bobbie is looking at me now, her brow dipped low and her head slightly cocked.
“I … we had … I don’t know.”
I sigh heavily and run my knuckles over the tops of my thighs, digging the bone into muscle and relishing in the ache that comes from it.
I deserve it and so much more.
“He’s a super sweet guy, honey. A great friend, I bet.” She looks forlorn at the bed and the thing that’s barely human separating us.
Which means she doesn’t see the way I stiffen.
Friend.
I’m not even sure he’d called me after what I did.
He’d be right not to.
“We’re gonna make sure you’re comfortable,” she whispers thickly to Mother, “until I can figure something out.”