29. Reinforcements #2
“Hmm?” My thumb finds its way to my teeth, and before I can think better of it, I bite my nail. I haven’t bitten my nails since high school.
“This was posted nine hours ago.”
I almost roll my eyes.
“It has five thousand comments.”
“Yup.”
“Natalie fucking tagged you.”
“Geez, I know, Nolan.” What the hell does he expect me to do about it?
I may be the first to reach for spite, but the women in my life are masters at controlling their narrative.
“Why didn’t you lead with this when I walked in?”
“Oh, I don’t know. It seemed like we had more pressing, urgent family issues to get through first. Next time, I’ll know to prioritize the catastrophes in my life before you walk in my door.”
He looks at me with wide eyes. Then he laughs—once, dry, like he’s aiming for humorless but can’t quite master it.
“Fair,” he chuckles.
“I thought so.”
He flips through Natalie’s slide show, pausing on her caption. The cost of one woman’s vendetta.
“She’s desperate,” he says flatly. “She’s trying to profit off the bullshit audience Grace has already built. That’s the only way a post like this serves her. You, my little Spite-Berry, are once again collateral damage.”
I shrug because it’s something I’ve already come to terms with.
“She’s using a photo of her disabled brother for fucking engagement. That tells us all we need to know about the kind of person we’re dealing with.”
“Well, that or when she wrote my number on the stall door at Fenway Park in a black Sharpie and encouraged people to call me for a good time. But yeah, her brother was a dead giveaway too.”
“Jesus, Junie.”
“It is what it is.”
“As a medical professional. I’m—I’m genuinely— I cannot.”
“She’s a horrible human.”
“You do seem to collect those,” he grumbles.
“But her brother is innocent.”
“So were you,” he growls. “The fact that she’s using a vulnerable adult who has not, to our knowledge, consented to being on a public platform as a prop, isn’t a personal grievance.
That’s… Junie, that’s not just gross, that’s potentially actionable, depending on what his guardianship status is and who has the right to consent for him.
This isn’t Natalie having a bad day on social media, this is her making a choice. ”
He hands me my phone.
“Her brother’s going to be collateral damage because of my decisions, Nolan.”
“No. Nope. He’s in this position because of the choices his sister made.”
“I know that, but…” I’ve never even met this guy. I don’t know what he’s like, or if he’s kind. I don’t know if he’s aware that life as he knows it is about to change or if Natalie has any kind of contingency plan in place.
“If I hadn’t—”
Nolan opens his mouth to argue, but I put my hands up to stop him.
“If I had just thought, for a few minutes, I could’ve made the same choice but with less damage, I could’ve looked into her brother a little more. I could’ve…”
“You could’ve what? Saved him? Protected him?”
“I don’t know, okay? I just know I don’t like how I feel right now. I don’t deserve this, but neither does he.”
Nolan studies me as if I’m a zoo animal.
“I sent the email to take down Natalie. She hurt me, yes, but she hurt Cole, and that wasn’t something I was willing to accept.”
“The question is, why were you willing to accept that she hurt you, but not Cole?”
“I—” His question genuinely stumps me. What did he do, take a bunch of psychology classes in Japan? I scratch at my neck like I can’t breathe. “It’s what I knew, I guess.”
“And now you can unlearn that behavior because that shit isn’t healthy.”
“Yes, okay. Fine. But my point is, I sent that email to take down Natalie, not Marcus.” That’s the point I’ve been struggling with since she tagged me in her post. “Marcus isn’t collateral I’m willing to accept.”
“Okay.”
I stand and begin to pace in front of my window that overlooks the driveway, and pause mid-step because freaking Cole is still on his damn porch. I jump behind the curtain and then continue to pace from the couch to the island and back again.
“There must be something I can do, right? Some way I can undo what I’ve done? Not completely. I still want Natalie to suffer—Spite-Berry is ingrained deep—but for Marcus? There must be safety measures and services for people who need help. Right? They won’t just…toss him out on the street?”
“Why do you feel so compelled to help a man you’ve never met?”
I scoff. “Did you switch specialties? I thought your focus was on women’s health, which is weird as fuck, but whatever. When did you become a shrink?”
“Answer the question, Juniper.”
Why? Because guilt is heavy. Because I’ve been on the shit end of a social media takedown? Because me helping Marcus would be pouring salt on Natalie’s wounds?
No. While I admit that last one is a tiny bit gratifying, that’s not why I’m focused on helping him.
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” I finally say.
“It looks as though Natalie’s raising a lot of funds through her GoFundMe account.”
I cringe. “She is. But…the truth always comes out. When people learn the truth, they may not come through with the funding they’ve promised.”
“That’s true.” He catches my arm right as I’m about to pace back to the kitchen. “You’re sure this is what you want to do?”
“I am. I don’t have a lot of resources right now, but I want to at least try.”
“You know this is something I can help with, right? Even though I’ve been in Japan, I still have a large network through my med school colleagues. Social workers, case managers, disability advocates.”
“You’ll help?”
He nods.
“Thank you, Nolan. For…everything.”
He chuckles and pulls me into a hug. “I’m your brother—this is the kind of shit you never have to thank me for.”
I hug him tighter, not ready to let go.
“I’m going to make some calls, okay?” He rubs my back, and I release him. “It’ll take some time, but I’ll do what I can for Marcus.” He pulls a laptop from his bag and a phone from his pocket, then sets himself up at my coffee table.
While he works, I actively avoid the front windows, and instead take the longest, hottest shower of my life. By the time I emerge an hour later, Nolan has a baseball game on my small TV, his feet up on the coffee table, and a beer that makes me wonder if Katie stopped by.
“Done?” I ask, squeezing in beside him.
“For now,” he says. “His actual care plan will likely take months to implement, but I called a friend at Mass General who worked in disability law before switching over to medicine. She called a colleague in New York.”
“Is that legal?”