Back To Us (6 page)

Sometime before the sun came up my brother finally made it home. I heard him as he fumbled through my room in the dark on the way to his bedroom. I drifted back to sleep and woke up a few hours later. It took me a minute to recognize the noises coming from my brother’s room. He was puking his guts out, probably from all the drinking he’d done. Mike ignored me when I knocked on his door—I went in anyway. He was lying in bed curled into the fetal position and he looked like shit.

“Exactly how much did you have to drink?”

“I don’t know,” he said, his speech slurred. “Four, maybe five, or ten.”

He was making no sense. It was almost ten in the morning and he’d been home for a few hours already. Which meant that even if he’d been drunk when he got home most of the alcohol should have left his system already. That made me wonder if something else was going on.

“What else were you doing besides drinking?”

“Took some. . .” Mike pointed to his bedside table. “To help me sleep.” He was speaking in broken sentences that I couldn’t make much sense out of. There was a pill bottle lying on its side, completely empty. I picked it up and held it in front of my brother’s face.

“What the hell was in here?” The label that had been there was torn off.

Mike didn’t answer. I shook him to try and wake him up, but all he did was moan and try to knock my hands away. I stared at him for a moment trying to figure out what I should do. What if he’d overdosed on something? Panicked, I ran to my room for my cell phone. If I called whichever friends he’d been hanging out with they’d know what was in that bottle, but I wasn’t sure who to call and my brother was too out of it to answer any of my questions. Before I was able to figure out what to do, my phone, which was still in my hand, started ringing. I picked it up without even bothering to see who it was.

“Hello.” I could hear the panic in my voice.

“What’s wrong?”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Justin. Did I call too early?”

“No. . .no, it’s not too early.”

“You didn’t stop by yesterday.”

I glanced at my brother who was still and pale. I tried shaking him. “Mike, Mike.” He didn’t answer. “Can I call you back, Justin? Now really isn’t a good time.”

“What’s going on? You sound really upset.”

“It’s my brother.” I was too worried to keep my mouth shut. I felt like I was on the verge of tears, but I bit them back as I spoke. “I think he might have overdosed on something, but I don’t know what.”

“Did you call an ambulance?”

“No. I can’t do that. What if they think he tried to kill himself or something and make him stay in the hospital?” I’d seen it happen more than once to some of the girls I lived with at the group home. “He’ll kill me for doing that to him.”

“Give me your address.”

“What? Why?”

“I’m coming over. I can help you figure out what to do better if I see him.”

“No. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I didn’t want Justin seeing the neighborhood I lived in, much less the inside of my piece of shit apartment, and I seriously doubted there was anything he could do. Maybe he was right, I should just call the paramedics. “Besides you’re not a doctor, you’re a coach.”

“I was a Corpsman in the military, remember? Believe me, I’ll know what to do.”

Mike turned on his side and let out a groan before doubling over and dry heaving. He probably had nothing left inside him anymore.

“Fine,” I relented and gave Justin my address. Making sure my brother was okay was more important than Justin’s opinion of me, and realistically how much longer could I keep up the façade I’d been trying to since the beginning of summer? It was only a matter of time before Justin found out that the two of us were not in the same financial bracket, not even close.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Call me back if anything changes before I get there.”

Every few minutes I got up and peeked through the window blinds to see if Justin had arrived. When he finally did, I ran to open the door to my building. He followed me inside and then into my brother’s room. Mike was still sprawled across the bed, he seemed a little more awake.

“Oh shit, you weren’t kidding. He looks like crap.” Justin sat beside my brother and reached for his wrist. It took me a second before I realized he was counting Mike’s pulse.

“Well?”

“His pulse is a little fast, but that’s probably because he’s dehydrated from throwing up.” He turned towards my brother and shook his arm. “Hey bro, can you tell me what you took, what was in that bottle?”

“Zan. . .something.” His eyes closed and he turned to his side. “Oh fuck. I can’t remember.”

“I can’t make sense of anything he’s saying,” I said.

“It sounds like he’s trying to say Xanax,” Justin explained.

“What’s that?”

“You really don’t know?” Justin asked.

I shook my head.

“God, you’re innocent. They’re like sleeping pills.” Justin reached into his pocket for his cell phone.

I grabbed his arm. “Who are you calling?”

“Poison control, they’ll know what to do.”

They came on the line a few seconds later and Justin started to explain the situation to the person on the other end of the phone. A minute later he was done with the call.

“Well? What did they say?”

“They said that Xanax is supposed to be short-acting. As long as he didn’t mix the Xanax with a bunch of other stuff your brother should be better pretty soon. I can stay with you and help you keep an eye on him until he’s more coherent.”

“We don’t even know how many of those things he took, though.”

“The lady from poison control said it’s pretty hard to overdose on Xanax. It’s a sedative, that’s why he’s so out of it.” I turned away from Justin so he wouldn’t see the worried expression that was still on my face. He put his hand on my shoulder. “If he gets worse the only other choice is to call the paramedics.”

“Oh my God.” I sat on the edge of my brother’s bed. “I can’t believe he’d be this stupid.” I covered my face with my hands. It wasn’t even noon yet and I was already tired. Ninety percent of the time my brother was funny and nice and my hero. A year ago when I’d made the huge mistake of moving out of the dorms and in with my then boyfriend it was my brother who’d come through for me after our break-up. I had nowhere to go until my brother offered to give up his studio apartment in Alphabet City so we could find a two bedroom to rent together. There was no way I could’ve afforded a place on my own, and the dorm had a waiting list to get back in.

The other ten percent of the time my brother drank too much or smoked too much pot and wound up getting himself into trouble. He didn’t see it that way. I knew that later on, after whatever pills he’d taken had worked their way out of his system that Mike would tell me I made a big deal out of nothing and that I needed to learn how to chill. One of us had to be the worrier though, because my brother seemed to think that no matter what happened things would work out, and I happened to know for a fact that wasn’t true.

As a child Mike had been as damn close to perfect as a son could get, but after my dad decided he’d had enough of his disappointing children and pretty much abandoned us, my brother went wild doing all the things he’d always been too scared to when we were under my parent’s roof. And when Mike got upset, which thankfully didn’t happen too often, he got pretty self-destructive.

Justin sat beside me and placed his hand on the small of my back. “You all right?”

I sat up straight and took my hands from my face. “Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll be fine.”

Justin’s eyes darted around the room. He was probably wondering how in the world I managed to lure him to my ghetto neighborhood and rundown apartment. I waited to hear what was on his mind. “So you live here with your brother?”

“Don’t be jealous,” I replied, sarcastically, trying to ease the tension I felt inside.

“Well, I’m not going to lie. It’s not the nicest apartment in the world, but. . .”

“But it’s all I can afford for now. I have tuition to pay for and the job at the community center is great, but it’s not exactly the best paying.” I tried not to sound bitter.

“Your parents can’t help you out at all?”

“They can. They just don’t want to.”

“I can’t believe that. You’re like a perfect daughter. You go to college, you have a job. . .and you’re a really good person.”

“How do you know I’m a good person?” Compliments made me uncomfortable, especially ones about my character. I wanted to be good, but most of the time I didn’t see myself that way. I saw myself through my father’s eyes. Lazy, selfish, shallow. It had been years since I’d seen my father and had to hear him say those things to me. Fourteen years of having him raise me had been enough to convince me it was true. For four years I was forced to sit through weekly mandatory counseling sessions at the group home, but the social worker assigned to me was more interested in staring at her manicure than helping me. “It’s not like we’ve known each other that long.”

“Long enough for me to figure that out about you. I see the way you are with the kids at the center. They really like you, you know.”

“Really?” I turned to look at Justin’s face. He seemed sincere as he nodded, but suddenly I was desperate to change the subject. So. . .” I finally said after a few moments of silence passed. “How about we talk about you instead?”

“Sure. What do you want to know?”

“What was it like being in the Navy? Did you get to go to any fun places?”

“There was boot camp and corps school in Chicago. Then I got stuck at Camp Lejeune, or swamp Lejeune as everyone calls it, which sucked almost as bad as Afghanistan did.”

“You went to Afghanistan? What was that like?” The truth was Justin was the first military person I’d ever met, and I found the whole idea of it sort of fascinating.

“Pretty boring.” Justin’s face went blank and after a moment he stood and started for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“To get your brother some water.”

A minute later Justin was back with a glass of water in his hand. He was able to get Mike to take a few sips.

Justin sat back down beside me, the glass of water still in his hands. He wiped the beads of condensation off with his fingertips “So why won’t your parents help you?”

“Long story.”

“You always say that when you don’t want to answer something.”

“It’s not like you’ve told me your whole life’s story either. And we agreed that you’d go first, remember?”

Justin frowned. “I don’t remember agreeing to that.” Justin set the glass of water down on my brother’s bedside table. “But since you insist, what else is it that you want to know about me anyway?”

“Well, I was kind of curious about your injury.”

Justin looked at me, but didn’t say anything.

“Is it PTSD? Is that what happened to you?”

He had that same faraway look in his eyes that he did when he first told me he’d left the Navy because of an injury. “Yeah.”

There was a girl who stayed in the group home for a while whose dad had PTSD so bad that he physically abused her. When she told me the things he’d done to her I couldn’t believe she still loved him, but she did. She’d visit him on weekends sometimes and came home crying when things didn’t work out the way she wanted them to. My mother tried to convince me that’s what was wrong with my dad too. Only she didn’t use the words PTSD. She would just say that my father had been through a lot and that’s what made him act the way he did.

I was about to ask Justin about his limp, but it was pretty obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it so I didn’t push. He picked up the glass of water again and gave my brother a few more sips to drink.

“Where’s Mel?” my brother asked after he was done drinking. His speech was still slurred, but at least he was awake.

“I don’t know. I haven’t talked to her today.”

“I need my phone,” Mike said. He reached under his pillow and threw aside his blankets trying to find it.

“I really think you better wait to call her until you sound a little less drunk.”

“I’m not drunk.”

“Drunk, high, whatever. You’ll just get Mel pissed off if you call her sounding like you do now.”

Justin cleared his throat and I turned around. For a second I’d almost forgotten he was in the room with me and Mike.

“I’m going to get us all something to eat while you two talk.”

“You don’t need to do that,” I protested.

“Yes he does,” Mike interrupted. “I’m starving. I’d like an everything-bagel with cream cheese, and an espresso, double shot.”

I glared at my brother. “Ignore him, Justin.”

Justin turned and headed for the door. “Got it,” he said. “One-everything bagel. I’ll just get you what I think you might like, Jesse, ’cause I know you’re not going to tell me.”

After Justin left my brother sat up in bed. He looked up at me with a smile on his face. “So that’s Justin?”

“Yes.”

“What’s he doing here? I thought you two were just friends.”

“We are. He called me while I was in panic mode about you and insisted on coming over here to help.”

“Sounds suspiciously like a guy who’s interested in my sister.”

“No. He knows medical stuff, so he was just trying to be helpful.”

Mike swung his legs around and reached for my hand. I resisted the urge to mother him and tell him to get back in bed, instead I helped to get him on his feet. “You know, you’re impossibly naïve.”

My brother was wrong, I knew a lot more about boys than he thought I did, but I didn’t argue. In many ways he knew me best, but there was a chunk of my life that he knew nothing about, and that was probably for the best. Besides, it wasn’t naiveté that kept me believing Justin was interested. I couldn’t bring myself to believe it was true, because what if it wasn’t?

“Where are you going?” I asked as Mike headed for the door.

“To take a shower. I want to be dressed by the time your friend gets back with breakfast.”

“Before you do that can you at least tell me what the hell you were thinking taking all those pills?” I said, my hands on my hips.

Mike sighed, then turned to face me. “I pretty much passed out after I got back home, but then I woke up too early and I was still in a shitty mood about me and Mel fighting so I couldn’t fall back asleep. That’s why I started taking those pills. My buddy Parker gave them to me a while back, he told me they were for sleeping. I took one, but it didn’t feel like it was doing anything. So I took another one and then another. I probably should’ve just given them more time to work.”