Chapter 22
ELIAS
I’m no stranger to hanging out at the Children’s Hospital waiting room; Cal has a chronic constipation problem where he has to have the occasional suppository to clear him out, so these trips are pretty routine.
This one, however, is not. By the time Miya and I got to the hospital, Matty was a nervous wreck, rubbing Calum’s back as he puked on the bathroom floor.
“What happened?” I crouch down next to Cal while Miya rounds up some paper towels, and it’s immediate how Cal turns and tucks himself into my arms. “Hey. buddy.”
“Um.” Matty looks sicker than Cal does, wringing and twisting his fingers together.
“Long story short, I thought Cal may have swallowed my hearing aid battery, so I brought him in. The internet said feeding him honey would help keep any adverse reactions down, so I … force fed him a little too much of it. I think it upset his stomach. After the x-ray, he just started puking and wouldn’t stop. ”
Matty finally looks up at me, and his eyes are brimming with tears, bottom lip quivering. “Good news. No battery. I’ll have to scour the house for it when we get—” He cuts off with a sniffle and a shaky laugh.
With one arm wrapped around Cal, soothing down his back, I offer the other to Matty.
He lifts his hand like he’s going to take it, but then his expression ripples, and he drops it back to his side.
Trying not to let the hurt show, because I’m sure he’s beating himself up enough as is, I put on a smile and press a kiss to Cal’s hair.
“Everyone’s alright, and that’s what matters.”
After a few minutes, we get everything cleaned up, flag down a janitor, and are asked to wait a little longer so a doctor can examine Cal.
Surprise, surprise, he’s backed up again.
Cal isn’t usually tired this early in the night, but the hospital trip plus the vomiting must have tuckered him out, because he’s sprawled across one of the waiting room benches snoring away with his head in Matty’s lap.
The poor kid spent the last half an hour switching between Matty and me before we decided to just sit next to each other so he could fit himself between us.
“I was so scared,” Matty says, the first words I’ve heard from him since the bathroom. “When I couldn’t find the battery, I panicked. I never thought about him being able to get them. I keep my hearing aids as far away as possible …”
His voice cracks, and he clears his throat, though it sounds an awful lot like he’s going to cry again. He’s got his head bent forward, hair hiding his expression, and I gently run my fingers through it to tuck it back.
“This has to be really stressful for you.” I stroke my thumb over the shell of his ear, and he shudders, shooting me a look I can’t quite decipher. “Do I need to pick you up new batteries?”
He shakes his head, knocking the hair loose, and when I go to touch him again, he takes my hand and puts it back in my lap.
“I’ll have to get a replacement. It got busted.”
“Shit. Matty, I’m so sorry. We’ll get you a new one ASAP.”
Matty lets out a heavy breath, and the sound that accompanies it is small and sad. “I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry.”
But I am worried. Because he isn’t acting like himself. I rest my hand on his thigh, and his shoulders tense, and then he’s burying his face in his hands leaving me all kinds of confused.
“Are you okay?”
“No.” The word comes out strangled. “Because Calum almost wasn’t.
And he screamed and fought me the whole way here, so I felt extra shitty dragging him down, but I needed him to be okay.
There are so many noises. It’s too loud, but I can’t make half of anything out because there’s so much.
Splitting my attention between Cal and the doctors meant everything they said was muffled or took me way too long to put together. ”
Tears escape through his hands down his cheeks, and he throws his head back to scrub at them with his palms.
“I’m overwhelmed, and I appreciate you wanting to comfort me, but I’m feeling really shitty, and you touching me is just … it’s too much right now.”
“I’m sorry.”
His shoulders deflate, and I can see just how torn he is by the look in his eyes. He wants to lean on me, to seek comfort, but he’s wound too tight.
“I’m the one who should be sorry.” His voice is just so small. “I wasn’t paying enough attention. I was so busy talking to—” He slams his mouth shut, the guilt rolling off him in waves.
I hate that there’s nothing I can do to make him feel better. If he expects a lecture, I don’t have one. This is par for the course, and with how involved Matty has become over the last several weeks, it was only a matter of time before something like this happened on his watch.
Looking at him now reminds me of the early parenting days.
Everything scared me. Cal needed physical therapy when he was a baby because he wasn’t hitting his milestones.
He went to hearing specialists for over two years because he wouldn’t respond to his name or loud noises.
Occupational therapy. Speech. Developmental. Gut doctors.
Cal’s entire life has been in and out of one institution or another, a new hurdle every time we think we’ve mastered the last.
This is life for us. Cal and I, we’re in this for the long haul. No matter what happens, how tough things get, I’ll never turn my back on him.
Seeing what happened tonight, I don’t think Matty would either. He’d go to the ends of the Earth for Cal.
But it would tear him up in the process.
So, I decide to give him some space. I pull my hand away and pretend his pained sigh doesn’t make me want to reach for him again. He strokes his fingers through Cal’s hair, and I can’t read his expression, so I try to focus on anything else.
When the nurse calls Cal back, I help him to the room, and even though Matty tries to follow, I put a hand on his chest and stop him.
“Go home.” His jaw twitches like he’s going to argue. “I mean it, Matty. Unless you want me fussing over you, too. Go home. Miya will walk with you.”
I don’t tell him that it’s because I’m almost afraid to let him leave alone. Afraid home is the last place he’ll go.
My sister is on top of things, because she comes up to Matty and tugs on the sleeve of his hoodie. “I’ll take you by the diner, and we can grab milkshakes.”
I mouth a ‘thank you’ to her as she leads him out, and by the time I crash into the lone plastic chair in Cal’s room, I think the exhaustion might just take me before the night is over.
It’s around two in the morning when Cal and I make it back home, and thanks to the Versed, he’s still crashed out in my arms. Miya gets the door and helps me settle him into his bed, and I don’t have to say a single word for her to motion to the couch with a stern, lifted brow.
There isn’t any fight left in me, so I plop down beside her and throw my head back on the cushion.
“We found the battery,” she says. “After twenty minutes of Matty tearing the place apart. He was terrified, Ei.”
“I know he was.” My throat is dry and cracked. “How is he doing now?”
She shrugs. “Couldn’t tell you. He wouldn’t speak a word to me. I got a couple of signs out of him, but he’s shut down, little brother. I think the gravity of being a parent finally hit him.”
The severity in her words has me sitting up straighter. “He isn’t Cal’s parent, though.”
“No,” she says slowly, “but don’t you think he’s kind of taken on a similar role?
He’s more than just a babysitter. He lives here.
He doesn’t just see Cal for a few hours and then go back to his life.
This place. The two of you. You are his life.
The line is blurred so far there might as well not be one. ”
She’s right. Shit, she’s right. I was afraid of Cal getting too attached, afraid that something official would be throwing Matty to the sharks, but this mess we’ve made in the meantime?
It’s exactly what I wanted to avoid.
“I never wanted Matty to get hurt.”
“It’d be an adjustment for anyone. He cares about you. About both of you. He just … needs time.”
I’m already running on fumes, so my brain trying to whirr to life and figure out how to save this fragile thing between us only gives me a headache.
My eyes close, and I only mean for it to be a couple of seconds, but when fingers that are definitely not Miya’s touch my cheek, I know it’s been longer.
Sleep clings to me like sludge, holding tight and trying to drag me back under, but Matty’s soft, brown eyes staring down at me act as an escape rope, tugging me out of the darkness.
I don’t reach out, because I don’t know where he’s at with his touch aversion, but I do lean into the hand he places on my cheek.
“You should come to bed,” he says softly, voice like a wisp of air.
“Are you going to be there?” Because unless I can have him in my arms, I have no interest in moving from this spot.
He chuckles soft and low, and in the dim lighting of the living room lamp, I can see his braided hair slung in front of his shoulder and the red rings rimming his damp eyes.
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
Figuring that we’ve moved past the overstimulation from earlier but still wanting him to hold the reins of how much contact we have, I thread my fingers over his on my cheek and focus on feeling his warmth.
“Elias.”
“Hm?”
“Come lay with me.”
With an exaggerated sigh, I open my eyes again, but instead of standing, I reach for his braid and tug it lightly. He smiles so indulgent and sweet that it reawakens those pesky butterflies that treated my stomach like their playground when we first met.
His mouth opens, but no words come out. The smile dips a fraction as he sighs and grips my shirt in his hand. “Come,” he finally says with a quiet chuckle, and this time I do.
My body follows him like it was made for taking his orders. For giving this one man whatever he wants, whatever he needs.
Like I was made to exist with him. In this universe. In all of them.