I turn around at the waist and glare at him to shut up. He smiles, but he does shut up.
The ol’ man stirs almost unnoticeably and Asher moves over to the side of the bed. He taps Dad on the nose playfully. “Wake up. We brought burgers.”
Aidan holds his burger up as if our dad can actually see it. “They’re good, too. Better wake up soon or they’ll be gone.”
Dad doesn’t stir again.
He has all three of us trained. We would never think to stand around his bed and look all depressed and shit. And when he dies, Aidan and Asher will probably order a pizza and buy a case of beer and shoot the shit until the sun comes up the next morning.
I won’t be here for that.
In fact, the longer I stand here the better the chances are that he will die before I can leave.
I talk with my brothers and Michelle for a few more minutes and then walk over to Camryn.
“Are you ready?”
She takes my hand and stands up with me.
“Already leaving?” Aidan says.
Camryn speaks up before I do and says with a smile, “He’ll be back; we’re just going to grab something to eat.”
She’s trying to diffuse an argument before it starts. She looks at me and I, agreeing to go along with it, turn to Asher and say, “Call me if there’s any change.”
He nods but offers nothing else.
“Bye Andrew,” Michelle says. “It was good to see you again.”
“You too.”
Asher walks with us out into the hall.
“You’re not coming back, are you?” he says.
Camryn turns away from us and walks a little ways down the hall to give us a minute.
I shake my head. “I’m sorry, Ash, I just can’t deal with this. I can’t.”
“I know bro.” He shakes his head. “Dad wouldn’t even care, you know that. He’d rather you be getting laid, or shitfaced, than hanging around his old ass in that bed.”
He does speak the truth, strangely enough.
He also glances at Camryn once after having said that.
“Just friends? Really?” he whispers at me with a devious grin.
“Yes, we’re just friends, so shut the fuck up.”
He laughs in his chest and then pats the side of my arm. “I’ll call you when I need to, alright?”
I nod, agreeing. When he ‘needs to’ call me, he means when Dad has died.
Asher raises his hand to wave at Camryn. “Nice to meet you.”
She smiles and he disappears back inside the room.
“I really think you should stay here, Andrew. I really do.”
I start to walk faster down the hall and she keeps up right alongside me. I slide my hands down in my pockets. I always do that when I’m nervous.
“I know you probably think I’m a selfish bastard for leaving, but you don’t understand.”
“Well, tell me,” she says, grabbing me around the elbow and we just keep walking. “I don’t think you’re being selfish, I think you just don’t know how to deal with this kind of pain.”
She’s trying to catch my gaze, but I can’t look at her. I just want to get out of this death sentence built with red bricks.
We make it to the elevator and Camryn stops talking since there are two other people inside with us, but as soon as we stop on the ground floor and the silver metal doors slide open, she goes back to it.
“Andrew. Stop. Please!”
I stop at the sound of her voice and she turns me around. She gazes up at me with such a tormented look on her face that it sort of hurts my heart. That long, blonde braid still hangs over her right shoulder.
“Talk to me,” she says more softly now that she has my attention. “It doesn’t hurt to talk.”
“Kind of like how it doesn’t hurt to tell me why Texas?”
That stings her.
His words shut me up for about five full seconds. My hand drops from his elbow.
“I think your situation is a little more important than mine right now,” I say.
“Really?” he says. “And you wanting to ride around alone on a bus, not knowing where the hell you’re going and putting yourself in danger; that doesn’t seem imminently as important to you?”
He seems angry. I can tell that he is, but most of it, if not every bit of it, is because his father is upstairs dying, and Andrew doesn’t know how to let him go. I feel sorry for him, for being raised to believe that he can’t show the kind of emotion needed in a situation like this, or else it will make him less of a man.
I can’t show the emotion, either, but I wasn’t raised that way, I was forced into it.
“Do you cry at all?” I ask. “About other things? Have you ever cried?”
He scoffs. “Of course. Everybody cries, even big tough guys like me.”
“OK, name one time.”
He answers easily: “A … movie made me cry once,” but he suddenly appears embarrassed and might be regretting his answer.
“What movie?”
He can’t look me in the eyes. I feel the mood lightening between us, despite what created it.
“What does it matter?” he says.
I smile and step up closer to him. “Oh come on, just tell me—what, you think I’m going to laugh at you and call you a pussy?”
He breaks a small grin underneath the embarrassed flush of his face.
“The Notebook,” he says so low that I didn’t quite catch it.
“Did you say The Notebook?”
“Yes! I cried watching The Notebook, alright?”
He turns his back on me and I’m using every shred of strength I have to hold back the laughter. I don’t think it’s at all funny that he cried watching The Notebook; what’s funny is his humiliated reaction admitting it.
I laugh. I can’t help it, it just comes out.
Andrew whirls around with eyes wider than plates and he glares at me for a second. I yelp when he grabs me and throws me over his shoulder, carrying me right out of the hospital.
I’m laughing so hard I have tears in my eyes. Fun tears, not the ones I stopped shedding after Ian died.
“Put me down!” I beat my fists against his back.
“You said you wouldn’t laugh!”
Him saying that only makes me laugh harder. I cackle and let out weird noises I never knew I could make.
“Please, Andrew! Put me down!” My fingers are digging into his back through the fabric of his shirt.
Finally, I feel my shoes touch the concrete. I look at him and I do stop laughing because I want him to talk to me. I can’t let him leave his father.
But he speaks up first: