“Let’s go,” she says, everything about her shifting into professional. This is the person I need right now, but I know this person is only here because my mother loves me.
I lead her out the door, across our driveways, and into Owen’s house. It’s quiet when we enter, and I’m glad that James isn’t making noise. I’m hopeful that he’s fallen asleep, but I doubt that’s the case.
When we get to the top of the stairs, I hold my hand up, wanting to go in first. My mom stands against the wall, and I look into the room, Owen still cradling his big brother, both of their eyes glazing over, staring into nothingness—each for different reasons.
“Did you get Ryan?” Owen asks, his focus coming back quickly. His arms looking tired.
“No,” I say, and his posture deflates immediately. “But I got help. Please, don’t be mad. She can help.”
His eyes look terrified, and when my mom comes around the corner, Owen actually looks sick with embarrassment. My mom doesn’t let him feel it for long, though, moving quickly into her medical-care mode.
“How long?” she asks, and Owen cocks his head, his forehead creasing with his confusion, his desperation and all of the hurt. “How long has he been detoxing?”
“Oh…uh, maybe a day or two? He was here a few days ago, and I gave him money. I just…” Owen swallows, the guilt swallowing him back. “I just wanted him to leave. But it wasn’t a lot, and I don’t think he bought much.”
“Heroin?” my mom asks, Owen nodding as she rolls James’s listless arm in her hands. “Looks like he’s been getting high for a while.”
My mom sees a lot of junkies. Her hospital is in the middle of Chicago, and she used to take a lot of rounds in emergency. Since she’s been a practitioner, though, she’s seen less, her work more with regular appointments. But addicts come in all shapes and sizes, and she still sees them, at least once a week.
“Can you get to a pharmacy?” she asks, and Owen rubs his fists on his eyes, nodding yes and breathing regularly for the first time since I’ve seen him this afternoon.
“Here, this is for buprenorphine, it will help him through the worst of it,” my mom says, tearing a page from her script book and handing it to Owen. He reaches slowly, their hands touching as she passes this gift on to him. When his hand begins to tremble, she brings her other hand up and holds on tightly, squeezing.
“What is she giving you, O? Owen? What did that woman give you?” his brother’s face is pushed deep into his pillow, his body barely covered with the sweat-soaked blanket, but he’s trying to move. His strength has waned so much that the only thing he seems to be able to control is his neck and mouth. “Owen!”
Owen looks from my mother then to me, finally moving along the floor to kneel in front of James, pressing his hand firmly on his back, like a weighted blanket, his brother’s shivers stopping temporarily under his touch. “I’m going to get you medicine. She’s giving you medicine that’s going to make you feel better. You need to let me go, James. I’ll be right back,” Owen says, standing slowly.
James’s eyes follow every movement as the three of us move out of the room. When we’re in the hallway, Owen turns quickly and wraps his arms around my mom, surprising both her and me. She looks at me over his shoulder and brings her hands slowly up his back to embrace him, holding him to her and telling him it will be all right. But I can tell in her eyes that she doesn’t believe it.
She’s lying.
I wait with my mother in the hallway as Owen leaves, and then when the door closes we both slide down the wall, our legs falling in front of us, on opposite sides, and we look into each other.
The light seeping in through the windows is growing dimmer with every passing minute, and more than twenty pass before either of us says a word, my mom the first to break.
“I’m sorry, Kensington,” she says, barely a whisper.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I say back.
“I do. I’m weak,” she says, her eyes blinking slowly, her lips parted and waiting to find the courage to say the rest. “He wants to work through it.”
My heart is on fire, burning with flames that have engulfed my chest. But this is not the place to yell, to rile up the broken man, Owen’s suffering brother, in the room next door. So instead, I stare at her, waiting for her, daring her to finish, to tell me the rest. Say it! I’m screaming inside.
“Don’t,” I finally say back, my voice louder than it should be, so I hold my breath after, listening to the door, hoping James hasn’t found the strength to move.