Chapter 23 #2
“Please,” I whisper, because that’s all I have left.
And that’s when the double doors slam open behind her so hard they crack against the stopper.
“?Dónde está mi muchacho? Move! MOVE, LET ME THROUGH!”
I’m too wrapped in panic beating through my ribs to worry about us. Her sharp tongue short-circuits the whole damn emergency room.
Sofia, she’s here. Barreling through the PERSONNEL ONLY doors like she owns the building. Like the savior my brother thinks and says she is. Not one person dares to stop her. Not the nurse or the security guard.
Her lanyard swings from her neck. Her eyes are blown wide when she sees me. Her curls are wild, falling out of her bun. She got my message. Answered the call to help me. Help my brother. I almost collapse in relief. If anyone will help me, she will.
She moves fast, shoving past a paramedic and ducking under a gurney side rail.
Then her hand is on my arm, dragging me away from the nurse and the front desk before I can even make sense of it.
She looks like a thunderstorm. The good kind that breaks the heat and brings fat rain to cover the open roads.
“What happened?” she demands, breathless, eyes searching my face like she’s cataloging every emotion I’m too shattered to hide. “Where is he? Did you see him? Did they tell you anything?”
I shake my head because the words won’t come. My throat is too tight to let anything through.
“Dios mio! We will find out.”
Without thinking, without asking, without caring that a dozen people are waiting to be seen, she grabs my wrist and weaves us through the chaos. She knows exactly how to bulldoze through the system that employs her. She drags me through a set of security doors with her badge swipe.
Even though she shouldn’t bring me back here. Even though this is against every rule in the book, no one stops her. Maybe it’s the look in her eyes. Maybe it’s the speed she hauls me down the hall. Maybe it’s because everyone knows not to mess with her. Whatever it is, I’m so, so grateful.
“What the . . . where are we?”
Once the doors swing shut behind us, the noise drops in half. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. The air feels colder. My breath sounds too loud in my ears. She turns to me, her hand still wrapped around my wrist. She knows I’m not okay. Not even close. Terrified out of my mind.
“Papito,” she whispers, hand leaving my wrist to flatten over my chest like she’s grounding me with her touch. It’s working.
“Look at me.”
I do.
I can’t not look at her.
She’s my lifeline.
“Breathe like I taught your brother.” I hesitate, shaking my head, and I don’t remember anything calm or helpful. She mimics it with a four-count or six-count, I don’t even know. I stare into her face, watching her breath. “I need you to be calm if we’re going to find him.”
Her thumb strokes once over my sternum, small but devastating.
“He’s conscious, remember? You said that in the message.”
I don’t remember what I said in the messages. Not one single word.
“We handle the rest together.”
Together.
I hang on her word like a promise and commitment. A far better one word than space. I don’t know how or what it means, but I’ll take it together in whatever form she means it.
“I can’t lose him,” I rasp, swallowing hard and covering her hand with my own.
“You won’t, Papito.” The certainty in her tone, face, and action, I believe. She sees the worst of the worst every day. If she’s saying this, it’s true. It cracks something deep inside me. “Now come on. Let’s go find our Nene.”
Our.
Her hand slides from my chest just long enough to grab mine and tug me toward another set of double doors that she uses her badge again for. It burst open to a different kind of chaos.
Doctors shouting, people screaming, some moaning, and everyone running around. It scares me. I thought the ICU was scary with the codes and machines beeping. But this place makes Sofia’s department look like a library.
She doesn’t flinch. Ducks in and out of curtains pulled for privacy.
No one says anything to her. No one stops her.
It’s like they all know her or are too busy to say anything to her.
But the one thing she never does is drop hands.
Just grips tighter as we round the corner to another long hallway of hanging curtains, screams, and yells.
My pulse is hammering in my neck. Heat crawls over my skin, and I break out in a sweat after the umpteenth curtain she ducks behind to find my brother. It’s only when a howl rings out that we both look at each other and run down the hall.
“Emilio!” I rasp and run down the hall with her in tow this time.
We freeze for half a second. Eyes lock, and then we’re running.
Barreling down the hallway so fast I nearly wipe out on the linoleum.
Sofia is right behind me. Her hand is still on mine like she’s making damn sure I don’t collapse before I get there.
I rip the curtain back so hard it screeches on the rod, and there he is. My twin. Sitting half sideways on a gurney with his hair a wild mess, scrapes all up his arms, and a wicked cut to his walking boot. The blood-pressure cuff dangles off his arm while the nurse is trying to start an IV on him.
He’s alive, breathing, and talking. And giving the poor nurse absolute hell.
“I SAID I DON’T WANT ANOTHER SHOT!” he’s yelling, shirt torn, blood dripping from his elbow. Pointing at the needle intended for his vein, but he’s too hyped up. Too amped up from what’s happening. “SOF, MY ANGEL, YOU FOUND ME. TELL THEM I’M SCARED OF NEEDLES!”
The nurse sighs. Already tired of him or wants to quit her job on the spot. Sofia darts forward so fast that the nurse jumps out of her way. She goes full ICU command mode.
Covers his mouth with her hand to silence him while firing questions at the medical personnel about his vitals, asking what they’ve run, what they haven’t, what scans they got, what they’re waiting for, and suddenly, the staff is answering her like she’s the doctor down here.
I stand there for a second, knees locked, chest collapsing around the relief and leftover terror. And fury because he’s sitting up, yelling, being Emilio, and I’ve been dying for twenty straight minutes, convinced he was going to be worse off than before.
Then he looks up and sees me. His whole face splits into this huge, stupid grin, with her hand covering only his teeth. She realizes what’s happening and lowers her hand, but keeps firing questions at them.
“MAS!” he shouts, waving both arms like I’m not at the end of his bed. “How did you know I was here? Did they call you? Sorry about your bike. It’s fucked up. I think I hit a parked car or a mailbox. I don’t know which, but I laid it down pretty good, and then this tow truck hit it!”
My vision blurs. My throat closes. My hands shake. I’m going to kill him. I’m going to hug him. I’m going to give myself a heart attack.
But I don’t get a chance because Sofia turns her back to the staff, her eyes on me, and she gives me this tiny nod. Saying he’s going to be okay.
And for the first time since that unknown number called me, I finally can breathe. Because Sofia’s here, handling everything. And Em’s okay, still an idiot, but okay at least. But still, there is unanswered business. Still, needing answers.
“Bro, why the fuck did you even take my bike out in the first place. You know you’re not allowed—”
He exhales and then moans, catching everyone’s attention.
“My ribs hurt.”
Suddenly, everyone snaps into motion.
Sofia’s muttering softly to him, saying he has to lie down. The nurse with the needle drops it and dashes out from behind the curtain.
“Just be still. No moving. We need to get some X-rays, but you remember they didn’t hurt like last time,” she’s calmly talking through what needs to be done.
He’s staring up at her like she hung the moon.
Not even listening when a curl falls toward her face, and he holds it in his fingers.
“Now answer your brother, why were you stupid enough to do something to hurt yourself again?”
Her palm flattens on his ribs, and he flinches. Suddenly, his entire face crumples not with pain, but with this dramatic, stupid, emotional sincerity he’s famous for.
“I did it because you two weren’t talking. Because you were sad.”
He points at me with a shaky hand.
“And you were sad.” He points at her next.
“And I was sad.” His lip wobbles. “And I thought if I got hurt again, maybe you’d both come running and we’d be, you know . . . reunited. Like a family. Like we were supposed to be.”
My chest caves in. Sofia’s eyes go wide.
A passing tech mutters “Jesus Christ” under their breath behind the curtain.
“And it worked,” Emilio adds, shrugging one shoulder and then immediately regretting it when he groans in pain. “Look at us. We’re all here. Told you. Genius move.”
I want to strangle him with the stupid gown tie at the back of his neck. But I also want to laugh, cry, and throw up. Maybe write I WILL NEVER DO THIS AGAIN across his forehead with the little red stars Sofia used to draw on her instruction board in the ICU room.
She pinches the bridge of her nose like she’s praying for strength.
“Ay, Nene. You could have broken your ribs.”
“But I didn’t,” he says proudly, raising his shirt to expose the scratches next to his healing skin. “I switched sides to avoid my road rash.”
She mutters in Spanish, like she did when we first met on her floor in this very same hospital.
“You could have died.”
“But I didn’t.”
“You totaled his bike, Nene!”
“Mas doesn’t care. We’re twins and need twin bikes. I wrecked mine, so we have to get new ones anyway.”
“Emilio.”
He looks at me. Looks straight into me in that way he sometimes does when all the crazy drops out of him for half a second, and he becomes the person who loves the hardest in any room.
“You two make sense. We make sense. We need you, and you need us. Don’t you see it?
It’s clear as day, or maybe it’s so bright to me because I saw God when I hit the pavement.
He told me I was right to do this. But you were both too scared to fix it.
And somebody had to do something. So, I did something. ”
“By crashing a motorcycle,” I deadpan, gripping the edge of the bed for the fear that’s now leaving me exhausted.
“I didn’t mean to crash it. I meant to ride heroically to my angel, beg her to come back, and then we’d all hug and cry and forgive each other. The mailbox came outta nowhere.”
Sofia glares. “Mailboxes do not come out of nowhere, Nene.”
“It MOVED! Like I saw it and I avoided it, but then it came out and bit me. See the slivers in my hand.”
He raises his hand and sure as shit, it’s covered in so many red and painful-looking bits of wood, it looks like he’s covered in pepper. She gasps and holds his hand closer to her face to inspect it. I step back, not wanting to see any more.
“Dios mio. What did you do?”
And right there in all this craziness, with my idiot twin splayed across another hospital bed and Sofia worried about him, I realize Emilio’s right. Not about the mailbox. Not about his lack of genius plan, but the heart of it.
We do make sense.
And when she looks at me, I don’t see space. I see warmth and annoyed humor.
“Did you show the nurse already?”
“Nah, why would I do that? My hand already hurts. She’s going to make it worse with her needle.
” Em melts under her care. She could pick each one out, and he’d still howl and bitch the whole time.
But he’d love that she’s the one taking care of him.
She exchanges glances with me, knowing what needs to be done.
“I’ll go tell the nurse,” I say with a big sigh, which she nods at. I slip behind the curtain into the hallway to look for her.
“How’s our son? Does he miss me?” Em asks softly. I wait to see if she’ll answer. To see if she’s ready to commit to his nonsense.
“Yes, Nene,” She’s patronizing him, but I don’t think he cares. “He wants to know when he can swim with his stepdad in the pool.”
My heart squeezes, knowing she didn’t have to say that. Didn’t have to give him or me hope. But she does anyway because she means it.
“Knew it, Sof.”