I GET a taxi and tell the driver to get me to hospital. I take my phone out of my pocket and stare at it. I’m trying to think of who to call. Calling on Ziggy or Levi would probably only end in an argument, which is the last thing I want.
I press my thumb against the Power button and the screen lights up. Then I start to get notifications. The noise from the phone, where the notifications overlap, is kind of disturbing. The beeping doesn’t seem to stop. I have so many missed calls, so many voicemails, so many texts, so many Facebook, Twitter and Instagram messages. Some are from numbers I don’t recognize.
I delete everything without reading it and empty my voicemail. I lean back on the leather seats and appreciate the AC, which is on full blast. A few minutes later, I’m standing in front of the hospital, still trying to decide.
I take a deep breath before I click on Levi’s contact card. I hope he won’t answer and I’ll get to just leave a message, but instead he answers almost instantly.
“Damien? Oh my God, are you okay? We’ve been looking for you for days, where are you?”
“Hospital,” I say and quickly correct myself when I realize how that sounds. “In the waiting room. I’m okay, I just had another seizure, and I think I really need to see the neurologist, so I’m trying to—”
“Are you okay?”
I thought he would be angry. There is nothing but concern in his voice. Maybe I shouldn’t have stormed out like I did, but it wasn’t like he was leaving me much choice. I was just trying to prove to him I wasn’t lying.
“I’m okay,” I say after what seems like forever.
He exhales. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t—I was just—are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine. I promise.”
“We’ve been so worried about you,” he says. This edge is starting to creep into his voice, that the relief is gone, this kind of accusatory tone, which I guess I deserve, but I’m not ready for. It just makes me want to stop talking to him and hang up. “We’ve been looking for you everywhere. Where have you been?”
I sigh. “You know where. Listen, I have to go to check myself in, so if you could let Ziggy and Alton know—”
“You’re missing, Damien,” he says. “It’s not just me who is worried about you. The police are looking for you too. We’ve called every hospital, every morgue, every—”
“You’re calling morgues?”
“Yes! I haven’t heard from you in, like, three days. No one else had either. We thought you had just gone to cool off, but then when we realized you never even went home….”
“You know where I went,” I say, rubbing my temple. “I need to check in. Please let Ziggy and Alton know.”
I hang up on him without saying goodbye, mostly because I’m not ready to have this conversation. I’m not ready to talk to him at all actually.
THAT’S PROBABLY the reason he’s the first person to arrive. His clothes look new and expensive, which means he must have gone shopping. I think I remember him mentioning, a couple of times, that he turns to retail therapy when he’s stressed.
Even his shoes look new. I feel terrible.
“Hey,” he says. I’m sitting up in a hospital bed, waiting for the doctor to come back from somewhere. His gaze settles on my face for what seems like forever, while I think about what, if anything, I can answer.
“Levi,” I say, swallowing what’s left of my pride. He deserves an apology. He deserves more than an apology, really, but at the moment that’s all I can provide. “I’m sorry.”
He shakes his head, and suddenly his arms are wrapped around me, and I can smell his cologne and his new clothes. The hug lasts forever, and he’s not saying anything, and I feel so loved and so safe and so, so guilty.
I hesitate before I hug him, mostly because I feel like I don’t deserve to. Like I don’t deserve to be here, I don’t deserve to have him love me.
I expect him to be angry with me once I pull away, though, so I do hug him back, wrapping my arms around him and burrowing my face into his neck, tasting his salty skin under my parted lips.
His shoulders are moving and I’m suddenly completely aware of the fact that he’s crying. And I hate it. I hate that it’s because of me, I hate that I’m the reason this is happening, I hate that I’m the person causing him pain. I just want him to be okay and happy and not have to deal with me.
I try to move away from him, but he hugs me tighter, so I hug him back and let him sob on my shoulder, my hand cradling the back of his head, trying to calm him down. After a moment, he moves away from me. His eyes are red and puffy, and his eyelashes are soaked.
He grabs my face with both his hands and kisses my forehead, exhaling through his nose.
“I’m just glad you’re okay,” he says. “We can talk about it later. I needed to see you before—I just needed to see you.”
I nod. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to disappear for that long. Things kind of happened and I lost track of time. I couldn’t get in touch with you.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “We can talk about it later. Why are you here?”
“What do you mean?”
“Why did you check yourself in? Why didn’t you call me? If you didn’t want to talk to me, your brother—”
“I know,” I say, looking around and remembering why I came back in the first place. “I think I need to see my neurologist quicker than I thought.”
“Why?”
I rub the bridge of my nose and wonder how into detail I should go. “I saw him again.”
Levi looks at me, not saying anything.
“I had to warn him,” I say. “Because the—and if—I couldn’t—”
He just keeps looking at me, saying nothing. He’s not going to help me here.
“And then I had a seizure,” I say. “So I had to come back.”
He closes his eyes and exhales quickly through his nose. “That’s why you came back.”
“No,” I say. “Well, I mean, it’s the reason I came to hospital. Like—”
A doctor, I think, walks in and interrupts us. “Hello,” she says. “You must be Damien.”
I nod, still looking at Levi.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m Damien. This is my partner, Levi.”
Levi scoffs. He literally scoffs and his upper lip curls and I can see his teeth and so can she, and I’m pretty embarrassed and terrified at the same time, because once she leaves, God knows what’s going to happen between the two of us.
“I’m Dr. Shah. What’s going on?”
I take a deep breath before I look at her.