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Luke was warm for the first time in days.
He was the warmest he’d been since before his sister died, since when he was still in the rehab center and Joey was his friend and he was the most sober that he’d been since he was fifteen and gotten his first taste of how a healthy dose of cocaine could make someone feel. There were sheets over him that he could curl his fingers into, and he felt like he was sweltering, burning up, and after the cold few days after Nellie’s death, he welcomed the way it made him sweat. He was tired, utterly fatigued, but regardless, he forced his eyes open.
A hospital room. He was in a hospital room, and his sisters and brother were there, scattered around the room with anxious, unhappy expressions on their faces. Of course, Shirley was worrying her bottom lip, running her fingers together and wringing her hands, but he was surprised that Theo wasn’t working on draining a bottle of hard liquor. It came to him in bits and pieces, the Red Room, the rat poison, the long car ride to the hospital, but his memories were jumbled and incoherent, like he was watching a movie with the scenes out of order. Piecing a story together out of its separate fragments.
Shirley was standing in a flash, moving to hold his hand, and Steve walked forwards, placing his palm on his thigh through his blankets. Theo had her arms folded across her chest as she approached, tears growing in her eyes, and he was worried that his usually stoic sister was going to cry. “Hey,” Theo rasped, not seeming like she wanted to touch him. It made sense, knowing what she was capable of. His entire body was probably like touching a nightmare to her. “You’re alive,” she said, turning away. Her posture was tense and defensive, but he knew she was just scared.
“Yeah,” he croaked, “yeah.” There were other things he wanted to say, but the words just couldn’t push past his lips. It was like his tongue was made of heavy stone, and he couldn’t form the syllables needed to coherently express everything he felt. It had been like that for years, for one reason or another, whether it was the drugs, his crippling social anxiety, or his fear of saying the wrong thing and fucking everything up. He’d never had a way with words, that had always been Eleanor.
Steve chuckled. His brother sat on the edge of his hospital bed, starting to draw circles on him through the bedsheets with the tips of his fingers. He traced patterns into him, mindless circles, and Luke counted each full rotation, from one to seven and back again. “The doctors didn’t think you were going to make it,” he said, “but I told them that they didn’t know you like I know you.” It was funny, because they really didn’t know each other. Their relationship had basically ended after his second escape from a rehabilitation center that Steve had paid for with his plentiful funds, earned from his own family’s tragedy. “It’s been only eight hours,” he said, “so you still have a while to go before you’re in the clear, but they gave you vitamin K and activated charcoal when you were admitted. They say most of the internal bleeding has already stopped.”
Rat poison. Anticoagulants. Uncontrollable bleeding. He remembered salty red spilling from his own lips, the way his flesh bruised like his skin and veins were made out of tissue paper. Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath through the prongs in his nose that were feeding him oxygen. It was like this when he overdosed that final time in July, a couple weeks before Nellie took him to the rehab center that finally got him clean. Except then, it had only been Nell there for him when he woke up, and now, it was everyone but her in the room with him. Fighting against the urge to just go back to sleep, he opened his eyes again, weakly squeezing Shirley’s hand. “Love ya’ guys,” he choked out, words slurred, and his siblings’ faces softened.
“We love you, too,” Shirley said, and when she released his hand and bent over to embrace him, he raised his trembling right arm to hug her back, pulling her close. Steve kept rubbing his leg and Theo didn’t try to get any closer, but their fond smiles spoke volumes. When she peeled back, she sniffled, and Luke caught her rubbing the tears from her eyes as she grabbed his left hand again, lacing their fingers together and avoiding the IV that they had to run through it instead of his arm, since the veins in the crook of his elbow had been hardened by intravenous drug abuse.
Theo went to fetch the doctor, and when she came back, it was with an older, graying man with smile lines sketched on his face and a white coat that framed his potbelly and khaki pants. The doctor went over his treatment and expected outcome, showing him the medications he was supposed to take for the remainder of the week to ensure he didn’t bleed to death from a paper cut, and before he accepted them, he ensured none were painkillers. He didn’t think his sobriety, still in its infancy, could survive a round of OxyContin or amphetamines. When he was told that the deep ache in his bones was because they hadn’t used painkillers in general, both at the behest of his family and for fear of them functioning as blood thinners, something inside of him uncoiled with unbridled relief. He was still ninety-five days sober.
The doctor cleared out, and he was left with his family and the knowledge that after another day at the hospital for observation, he would be able to go home with one of them, although they didn’t want him at a rehab center without a familial support network. Theo was going to be moving out of Shirley’s house, and since the guest room would be available, he was offered a place to stay there until he could get a job or find another center that would take him. It was left unsaid that he would need to stay sober, but he was glad that Shirley trusted him enough to not mention it.
“Did you, um, ever get your credit c-card back?” He croaked once he was more capable of speech, the words coming easier with the haze of sleep out of his system. His stomach was upset, but he knew it was because of the charcoal he’d been given. Shitting what was essentially tar for weeks was an unappetizing idea, and he shuddered at the simple thought of it.
“I’m happier to have you back, Luke,” she said playfully, “but yes, I did.”
“Good,” he rasped.
“I found my car, too,” Theo drawled, “if anybody cares about that.”
Laughing, he tipped his head back against the pillows behind him. “I care,” he informed her, and with faux exasperation, she sighed and shook her head, not actually disappointed in him.
Finally walking up to him, Theo hesitated briefly before grabbing his forearm with an uncovered hand. Something dark passed over her expression, eyes clouding over, but as soon as the haunting expression crossed her face, it was lightening up, sunlight breaking through the storm clouds. She smiled down at him, lifting his hand to her mouth so she could press a tender kiss against his knuckles. “I missed you, baby brother,” she said, and although he’d been with them for days, he knew what she meant.
“I missed you, too,” he said, and that was that.
As they were getting packed up and ready to leave, he knew it was because they wanted Luke to get some sleep, in addition to having their own personal matters to deal with. Steve needed to work out his issues with Leigh, Shirley wanted to talk to Kevin about something she saw in the Red Room, and Theo wanted to ameliorate her relationship with whoever her new girlfriend that Luke hadn’t met yet was, although he didn’t know their name, having only seen them at Nell’s funeral. “You’ll be okay, right?” Steve asked as he shrugged on his jacket, and Luke nodded from his place on the bed.
It was the second of November, and he was ninety-five days sober. His sister was dead, but the rest of his family was alive, and better than they’d been in decades. It was a time of healing. “Where’s dad?” He asked at last, just realizing that he wasn’t there, and Steve blanched.
“He, uh,” he started, “he’s dead.” Luke’s blood ran cold. “He died in the house, shortly before we escaped.”
“Oh,” he said, because it was the only thing he could.
“Yeah,” Steve sighed, sticking his hands in his pockets. With a shrug and a lopsided grin, he waved at him. “We’ll talk about it in the morning. I’m heading back to LA for a little while, but I’ll be back in a couple of days. For now,” he jabbed a finger at him, “get some sleep.”
“I will,” he confirmed numbly with a shaky voice and wobbly lips, and it felt like the truth. His body was still recovering from the beating it had taken, and he was starting to have trouble keeping his eyes open. “Next time you come back,” he continued, “I wanna’ see Leigh with you.”
“Hopefully that’ll be the case,” Steve said, and with a final wave, he left.
The others had left before, and in the silence and serene darkness of his hospital room, it was easy to drift off. He was more at peace than he’d been since Nellie had died, and with it was the warmth that had soaked into his weary bones and sore joints, cutting through straight to his soul. He felt like he’d been running for years, from his past and his family, and with his sobriety and the closure of visiting the house a final time, maybe he could finally rest.