Chapter 29
twenty-nine
MAINE
When you’re feeling sorry for yourself, life has a way of making you feel like an asshole.
That’s my overriding thought as I sit in the ICU room, holding a bedside vigil for my sister, who looks so small in the hospital bed.
Her face is as pale as the sheets, making the dark circles under her eyes look like bruises.
Her chest rises and falls in shallow, labored breaths that make my own lungs ache in sympathy for her struggle. Her breaths are so slow, it’s like they’re slowing down time itself. In here, minutes stretch like hours, and the outside world feels impossibly distant.
But she’s holding on.
She’s stable.
The cardiac monitor beeps its electronic heartbeat—steady, mechanical, and comforting in its consistency.
Each peak and valley on the screen represents another moment my sister is still fighting.
The oxygen hisses through her nasal cannula with a soft, persistent whisper that sounds almost like she’s talking.
My parents haven’t moved in … God, I don’t even know how long.
They’re frozen in their matching vinyl chairs like grief has turned them to stone.
Mom’s eyes haven’t left Chloe’s face, tracking every tiny movement, every flutter of her eyelashes.
Dad stares at her chest, counting breaths like a meditation.
They’re two people, already exhausted, who might just break.
The silence is suffocating. Even the normal hospital sounds from the hallway seem muted, as if the universe has agreed to hold its breath along with us.
And, worst of all, there’s nothing I can do about it.
Because if there was—anything… lose an arm…
swap places with Chloe…—I’d have already done it.
“I’m going to go grab us something,” I say softly, my voice cracking from the first words I’ve managed in almost an hour. “Coffee?”
Dad’s head moves in what might be a nod. Mom doesn’t react at all, her gaze still locked on Chloe like she can keep her here through sheer force of will. But, either way, I need a break, and they need something in their body that isn’t grief and water from a little paper cup.
I slip out of the room, and the hallway hits me like stepping into another dimension.
Out here, life continues. Nurses walk down the corridor with purpose.
Someone’s laughing at the nurses’ station.
A TV murmurs from another room. It feels obscene, all this normalcy existing just feet from our little bubble of crisis.
The vending machines hum with fluorescent aggression at the end of the hall, so I walk over and feed it one of the last dollars in my wallet. The cup that drops down is thin enough to burn my fingers through the paper, and the liquid that fills it looks like motor oil and smells worse.
But it’s hot, and it’s caffeine, and it’s something I can do.
Something I can control.
After getting another coffee, I move to the snack machine, which eats the rest of my cash. Three times, the metal coil drops a bag of pretzels, and they hit the bottom of the machine with a sad little thump that somehow perfectly captures my entire emotional state.
Two coffees.
Three bags of pretzels.
Zero dollars.
A sister who might be dying.
Parents who are already ghosts.
Maya who ? —
No. Not going there. Can’t go there.
Back in the room, nothing has changed. I hand a coffee and a bag of pretzels to Dad, who takes them with hands that shake just slightly. It looks wrong—my father has a workman’s hands—and seeing them tremble makes something crack in my chest.
My mom doesn’t even notice I’m back, and I have to tap her on the shoulder to get her attention.
I put her coffee on a side table and press the pretzel bag into Mom’s hands, and she looks down at them with genuine confusion, like she’s forgotten what food is, what eating means, and what any of this is for.
I know then that it’s time for The Maine Show.
Time to be what they need.
“Those pretzels are stale, but at least they’re not salty,” I say, forcing my mouth into what I hope passes for a grin. “Because that would be adding insalt to injury.”
Jesus Christ. That might be the worst joke I’ve ever told, and considering my track record, that’s saying something. But Mom’s mouth—that tight line that’s been carved into her face for hours—quirks up at the corner. It’s a ghost of a smile, exhausted but real.
“Oh, Maine,” she whispers, clutching the pretzel bag like I’ve handed her something precious.
And that’s it. That’s my win. For ten seconds, maybe fifteen, she’s thinking about my terrible joke instead of the fact that her daughter can’t breathe on her own.
This is what I do. This is who I am in this family.
The jester. The distraction. The one who never needs anything because everyone else needs so much more.
A nurse comes in, her white sneakers squeaking against the linoleum in a rhythm that sounds almost cheerful. She’s young, maybe in her mid-twenties, with kind eyes and the particular flavor of tired that comes from working twelve-hour shifts in a place where people come to either get better or die.
She smiles at us—exhausted but genuine—and moves to check Chloe’s IV with efficient, gentle movements.
“Her sats dipped to eighty-eight on the last draw,” she says, adjusting something on one of the machines. “We need to keep a close eye on her oxygen flow and the ABG results. The doctor wants to avoid putting her on the ventilator if possible, but if her CO? keeps climbing…”
The words hit me like a foreign language. I catch fragments—oxygen, ventilator, words that sound important and terrifying—but I can’t piece them together into meaning. It’s like trying to read through frosted glass or listen to a conversation underwater.
Mom leans forward, desperate, grasping for understanding. “Is she… what does that mean? Is she getting worse?”
The nurse’s smile turns sympathetic. “We’re monitoring her closely, and the doctor will be by soon to discuss the treatment plan.”
It’s a non-answer, the medical equivalent of “we’ll see,” and the frustration that spikes through me is physical, like electricity under my skin. I need someone who can translate this. Someone who speaks both languages—medical and human.
I need Maya.
The thought hits like a sucker punch.
Not want.
Need .
I need her medical knowledge and her ability to parse these numbers and acronyms into something that makes sense. She’d walk into this room and immediately understand what was being said, and then tell me if my sister is dying or just having a bad day.
But as that practical need crests and breaks, it transforms into something else.
Something deeper and infinitely more dangerous.
I don’t just need the nurse. I need her .
I need Maya’s hand in mine, steadying me when everything feels like it’s falling apart. I need that way she has of looking at me—really looking, seeing past all my bullshit to the terrified guy underneath—and somehow making it OK to be that guy.
Even as the nurse leaves the room and we resume the wait, the craving is so intense it makes my hands shake as I pull out my phone, angling the screen away from my parents. The bright light feels wrong in the dim room, too harsh, too modern for this timeless vigil we’re keeping.
Our text thread opens, and our last exchange might as well be from another lifetime.
Back when I was just a coward instead of a coward whose sister might be dying.
Back when pushing her away felt like I was protecting her by denying myself.
It still is, probably, but I guess maybe I’m feeling more selfish now.
My thumb moves across the keyboard, clumsy and slow, as I write the message:
I need you.
Three words. Eight letters. The truest thing I’ve ever almost said to her.
They sit there on my screen, the cursor blinking after them like a heartbeat. One tap and she’d know. One tap and maybe she’d come. Maybe she’d forgive the silence and the walls and the distance I’ve forced between us. Maybe she’d walk through that door and make everything make sense again.
My thumb hovers over send.
I look at Chloe’s face, peaceful in artificial sleep, and then back at the phone.
Send it. Just fucking send it.
But the bet crashes down on me like a physical weight. The stupid, awful, grotesque bet that I can’t escape. That I can’t win without destroying her, and can’t lose without coughing up money I don’t have. It’s a constant millstone around my neck.
To ask for her help now—her genuine, compassionate help—while that lie festers between us would be beyond manipulation. It would be evil. It would be using her goodness, her competence, and her care while actively deceiving her about the most fundamental thing.
And even if the bet didn’t exist, there’s the older fear.
The deeper one. The one that’s been carved into my bones since I was old enough to understand that Chloe’s needs would always eclipse mine.
The knowledge that I don’t deserve help and can’t ask for it, because there’s always someone who needs it more.
Who needs me.
I look at my parents, these hollow shadows of the people who raised me.
They’re drowning in their own fear, barely keeping their heads above water.
To send that text is to admit I’m drowning too.
To admit I need rescuing. To become one more problem in a family that’s already buckling under too many of them.
The easy kid doesn’t need help.
The easy kid handles his shit.
The easy kid makes jokes and brings coffee and holds everyone else together…
…while he falls apart in private, where it doesn’t cost anyone anything.
I’m trapped between the only two rules I’ve ever lived by—don’t be a burden and don’t be a bastard—so I do the only thing I can live with, even though I’m not sure if I can actually live with it. I hold down the backspace key and watch the words disappear.
I need you
I need yo
I need y
I need
I nee
I ne
I n
I
Letter by letter, my lifeline dissolves, before she can know I almost broke, almost asked, almost chose her over my fear. And, safely back inside the walls of my pain—my prison—I put the phone back into my pocket, take a deep breath, and let the familiar mask slide back into place.
The easy smile.
The steady presence.
The son who needs nothing because everyone else needs everything.
“She’s going to be OK,” I say to no one in particular, to everyone, to myself. “She always is.”
Dad’s hand finds my shoulder, squeezes once. “Thanks for being here, Maine,” he says.
Mom reaches over and takes my hand, her fingers ice-cold despite the pretzel bag still clutched in her other hand. And, sitting here, surrounded by the three people I love most in the world, I have never felt more completely, devastatingly alone.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and for one wild, desperate second I think maybe it’s her.
Maybe she somehow felt it, that almost-text, that desperate need I couldn’t voice.
Or maybe the universe or God or whatever the hell exists out there put up the bat signal, a capital M in the sky that told her I need help.
But it’s just Mike, asking if I’m coming to tomorrow’s practice.
I stare at the text, at this reminder that there’s a world outside this hospital where people care about hockey and practice schedules and normal things. A world where I’m supposed to be the star left-wing, the team comedian, the guy who has his shit together.
I type back a message:
Can’t make practice, family thing.
Three dots appear immediately. Then disappear. Then appear again.
Finally, Mike’s message appears:
You OK?
Two words that feel like a kindness and a cruelty all at once.
Because no, I’m not OK. I’m about as far from OK as it’s possible to be while still technically functioning.
But admitting that would break the rules, would make me a burden, and would fundamentally alter who I am in the ecosystem of my family and friends.
So I lie.
All good, see you Thursday.
I lie, because the easy kid always smiles.
Even when he’s drowning.