You move in with me or I call in Mom.”

It was seven p.m. and I was driving a discharged Benny home from the hospital after my shift.

He looked at me, horrified, from the passenger seat. “Why are you punishing me? Isn’t my life shitty enough?”

“I’m not doing this to punish you,” I said. “You need help right now, and I can’t be over at your place cleaning for you and making sure you’re taking your medications. You’re not paying your rent and you just put yourself in the hospital. You’re skipping dialysis. You’re not even showering.”

He leaned his forehead on the car window. He looked so frail and exhausted. So different from the healthy, fit, virile man he was just eighteen months ago, before this nightmare started for both of us.

You know what? Maybe Mom did need to tap in. I didn’t know if I had the mental and emotional fortitude to take care of him and me. But then I wasn’t sure I had the mental and emotional fortitude to deal with her either. Calling her was definitely the nuclear option, and I did not take it lightly.

When the lid blew off the Nick thing last year, Mom had flown in from Arizona, where she’d retired with her husband, Gil, and mothered me to within an inch of my life. I’d had to call Gil to physically retrieve her when she wasn’t showing any signs of leaving when the one-month mark hit. She never stopped cooking. Not for a second. She filled my entire freezer, then bought a deep freezer for the garage and filled that too. The day she left, she

cooked hot dogs, put them in buns, and wrapped them in foil in the fridge like I couldn’t figure out how to assemble them once she was gone. I was still eating the leftovers a year later. It would be full-chaotic Mom energy if I summoned her home.

I turned onto the freeway. “It’s Mom or my place,” I said. “I don’t want to give up my apartment,” Benny said tiredly.

“I know,” I said, merging into the left lane. “But your apartment looks like shit. You’re barely taking care of the cat. Just move in with me. It’s only for a little while. You can have your old room. You can have my old room, it’s bigger,” I said, trying to sell it.

He paused before replying like it was wearing him out just to conjure sentences. “I don’t want to mess up your dating thing,” he mumbled.

“There’s nothing to mess up. I’m like the most single person you’ve ever met. You seriously wouldn’t be cramping any of my style moving in. I have nothing going on right now.”

He didn’t reply and I glanced at him. “This is only temporary, Benny.

You’ll get a transplant and you’ll get your life back.”

He stayed silent for a long moment. “I’m going to be dealing with this for the rest of my life,” he said quietly.

“It won’t always be this bad. Once you get a kidney—”

“I won’t. You know I won’t. You just don’t want to admit it.”

Now I went quiet. I didn’t know what was better. Trying to keep his hopes up or managing his expectations.

“Okay,” I said. “So let’s say you don’t get one and this is just your life now—it can still be a good life. It can be a great life. Why don’t we get you a home dialysis machine? You can do it at night while you watch TV. You only need to do it for two hours if you do it every day.”

There was no reply again, so I had to look over at him.

“I can do it from home?” he asked tentatively.

“Yeah, totally. You have a doctor for a sister. You can’t do it when you’re living alone, but if you move in with me, I’ll be there to sterilize the equipment, monitor your vitals.”

He looked slightly if not hesitantly optimistic.

“And if you do daily dialysis instead of three times a week, you can have restricted foods since the fluid won’t build up.”

He sat up. “I can have ice cream?”

I nodded. “Yup. We might even be able to get you off some of the meds with the more frequent dialysis. You’ll feel better, you’ll have more energy…”

I think this was the first time I saw him smile in months. Well, he sort of smiled. It was more of a neutral frown on the cusp of a smile—but still, it was progress.

“Benny, you can do this. You just need to get adjusted. I can help you.”

Please let me help you.

The silence hovered between us. “Okay,” he said finally.

“Okay? You’ll move in?” “Yeah. I guess.”

I let out a breath. I felt simultaneously relieved and sad. Relieved that I’d be able to take care of him, that I wouldn’t get any more surprise ER visits, that him being with me would give him a better quality of life. And sad that a certain chapter was ending—for both of us. Because both of our lives had officially come to an abrupt stop. We were adults, regressing.

It was like the clock had just wound back twenty years. Suddenly I wasn’t grown-up, thirty-five-year-old married Briana anymore. He wasn’t bright, driven Benjamin working in IT, training for a 5K. I was the older

sister again, in charge of watching a brace-faced Benny while Mom took night classes and worked a double. And I was going to have to watch him. Because I didn’t trust him with himself.

I got him home to his apartment and made him dinner. He barely touched it and went straight to bed. I drove home after starting a load of dishes and watering his wilting plants that still looked twice as alive as my brother did. I was so mentally drained by the time I got back to the house I just plopped on the sofa wrapped in a blanket and passed out there until the cat unceremoniously walked across my body at two a.m. Then I dragged myself to my room and stared at the ceiling in the dark, unable to go back to

sleep.

I was getting further and further away from the me I’d planned. Of the

life I had planned.

In two weeks, I’d no longer be married. I would, from this day forward, be alone.

I was never doing this relationship stuff again. Any of it.

I’d always told myself that what happened to Mom with Dad was isolated. That most men didn’t walk out on their pregnant wife and eight- year-old daughter, leaving them homeless and destitute. I believed in love. And when I met Nick, I’d believed I’d found the one. I was almost snide about it. See? There are good men out there. I knew lots. Zander, Gibson, Benny—and now I’d found one to be the love of my life too.

But having men as friends and peers and family is very different than having them as partners.

Everything Mom had told me my whole life about being in relationships with men turned out to be true: They can’t be trusted. They can’t be relied upon. Men will always hurt you and leave you and let you down.

What Dad did cut even deeper now, because he’d given his son his rare blood type but didn’t bother to stick around to give him a kidney when he needed one. The bitterness twisted in my gut like a knife.

I was done. Done with men.

From now on I’d use them the way they used women. For entertainment. For sex. For convenience. I would never live with a man I was dating and I’d sure as hell never get married again. Ever. And kids? No. Not if it meant I’d be attached to their father for the rest of my life.

I was so disgusted, so severely disappointed by what Nick and Dad ended up being. And it was reinforced daily, with every battered woman who came into my ER and every idiot I met on Tinder. It didn’t even surprise me that I couldn’t even find one decent enough for casual sex. The only ones on the dating apps who seemed to have their shit together always turned out to be married, which only further confirmed my opinion of dating men in general.

Jessica was right. I was better off with the cat.

For the next three days I packed Benny’s apartment and moved him in. His best friends, Justin and Brad, came to help with the heavy lifting. They set up Benny’s treadmill in the den, put his furniture in storage, and got him situated. Having his friends over at least got him to shower and put on clean clothes, so that was nice.

I made arrangements for a home dialysis machine to be delivered. I spent a full day washing the trash bags of dirty clothes I’d packed up from his apartment while he depression-slept. Then I spent five minutes holding a cold cup of coffee and staring morosely at the giant hideous cat-scratching thingy that now lived in my living room next to the equally hideous pink floral sofa that Mom bought in 1994.

I currently lived in the house I grew up in.

When Mom married Gil, she refused to give up her house. Even when he retired and they moved to Arizona, she still wouldn’t sell it. Mom said, with men you always need a fail-safe. To never put all your eggs in their basket.

Looks like once again Mom was right. When I left Nick, at least I had someplace to go.

I’d never decorated Mom’s house when I moved in. I didn’t really plan on still being here a year later, and decorating it made my situation feel permanent. So I just lived here in the faded remnants of my childhood. The whole place looked like a time capsule from the 1970s. Macramé wall art, oak cabinets and brass hardware, brown shag carpet, peeling linoleum in the kitchen. It was depressing. And now there was a cat tree the size of a real tree in here too.

Why did I live like this?

I could afford an apartment. I could afford a house. But I felt paralyzed by the idea of it. Like I’d had just enough strength to leave the home I’d made with Nick, but not enough to make a new one for myself. So I just squatted here like a castaway trapped on a deserted island.

Maybe a part of me was afraid to leave the island. Because then this was all real.

I took an extra day off work to finish moving Benny in. By the time I went back to the hospital on Wednesday, I was a zombie. I felt totally numb. Like the Nick thing and the Benny thing and the house thing were a horrible third-degree burn, so severe the nerve endings were gone and I could feel nothing.

It occurred to me that this was the worst time of my entire life.

I mean, when Nick cheated, yeah, that was bad. But at least Benny still had his kidneys then. At least I still had Alexis nearby. I had hope.

Now I had a dialysis machine getting delivered in a few days, Benny wasting away mentally in a bed down the hall, and a litter box in my laundry room that only I was going to clean. My best friend was two hours away and too busy with her new life to be the diversion I needed to not think about all this.

There was nothing for me to look forward to. Even the chief position was at a standstill. I had no dating prospects. No joy in my life. Not a single distraction. I hadn’t had sex in a year. I was just getting older. Heading in the wrong direction in every way, my life crumbling around me.

And I was bored.

That was the worst thing of all. The boredom. The monotony of my uneventful, unremarkable, depressing fucking life.

If Benny wasn’t a factor, I’d do Doctors Without Borders or something, walk the earth. What was the point of being in Minnesota? It was cold here, everything reminded me of Nick, or, worse, Kelly. I was alone. I didn’t even really want the chief position if I was being honest with myself. It just seemed like something everyone expected of me after Alexis left, and I figured why not, what the hell else was I doing? At least I’d be building my résumé.

This wasn’t the life I wanted. And I didn’t know how to change it. It was quicksand.

Jocelyn was at the nurses’ station when I came onto the floor clutching a triple cappuccino and feeling as tired as I looked. I had no idea how I was going to make it through the day.

“Hey, someone left something for you.” She nodded to a spot behind the counter.

I leaned over wearily to look. There was a jumbo-sized red velvet cupcake with an envelope taped to the container with my name written on

it.

I smiled for the first time in days. Alexis? “Who’s it from?” I asked.

“Don’t know. It was here when I got here yesterday.” She tapped a pen

on the counter and eyed me. “Hey, you okay? You called out.”

“Fine,” I said, leaning down to pick up the card. I set my coffee on the counter and slid a finger under the seal on the envelope.

It was a letter. A long letter. Handwritten. From Dr. Maddox.

I blinked at it. Dr. Maddox? Why?

I looked around, like he might be somewhere watching. I didn’t see him. “Who’s it from?” she asked.

“Nobody. I’ll be right back.”

I grabbed the cupcake container and hurried to the supply closet. I shut the door behind me, sat on my toilet-paper box, and pulled the letter from the envelope. It was in black fountain pen, clear and careful writing.

Briana,

I sometimes find that journaling helps me organize my thoughts. I seem to be having a hard time saying and doing the right things recently, so I figured writing this down might be best.

I wanted to thank you for the cupcake suggestion.

You are likely unaware of this, but I deal with some social anxiety. It’s worse when I’m in a new situation with people I don’t know. Interaction doesn’t come naturally to me in those circumstances and I struggle. When I make mistakes, like I’ve done often since I got here, it makes me more uncomfortable and my anxiety gets worse. I get more nervous, and that makes me more withdrawn. It’s a bit of a self-

perpetuating cycle. So your help was deeply appreciated, even though I know you didn’t have any reason to give it.

There are a few things I want to address.

You mentioned that Dr. Gibson was holding off the vote for head of emergency medicine in hopes that I might be up for the position. I have no interest in this job, nor did I convey any such thing to Dr. Gibson upon my arrival. I was unaware he was making this decision, and I have told him I do not intend to run. I’m sorry if you felt that the delayed vote was done on my behalf. I was not a part of it.

The other day when I came to your brother’s hospital room I didn’t mention that you broke my phone. I was frustrated and should have picked a better time to bring up you running into me in the hallway. But again, my anxiety sometimes makes it hard for me to gauge social cues, and I don’t always express myself the way I hope to. It was poor judgment on my part, and I apologize.

Lastly, in the supply closet, when I said that your brother could live on dialysis—my mom had chronic kidney disease when I was a teenager. She received a kidney transplant before she required dialysis, but that period of my life was a terrifying time. I remember feeling comforted by the knowledge that if her kidneys failed before she got a donor that at least dialysis would keep her alive. It wasn’t like losing your lungs or your heart. She would have time. She would have decades if she needed it.

I meant what I said to be reassuring, but I didn’t consider how insensitive it would come off without context. I in no way meant to minimize what was happening to your brother or invalidate what has to be a traumatic and life-altering diagnosis.

If any of my mistakes have brought you stress or unhappiness, please accept my deepest apologies. It was unintentional.

Again, thank you.

Sincerely, Jacob

I set the paper down on my knees.

Wow. I was an asshole. I felt HORRIBLE.

I saw so much of the last few weeks differently now. I should have done more to welcome him here. I should have given him the benefit of the doubt or at the very least not been such a raging bitch.

I looked back at the letter resting on my thighs.

I don’t think anyone had ever written me a letter before. It was shockingly effective. Way better than text or email, like it had a different weight to it or something. There’s something about holding the paper in your hand, seeing the ink on the page, the press of the pen. He made this. It took effort. It was a physical act. He couldn’t erase it if he made a mistake, he had to think about what he was going to say before he said it—or he said exactly what he wanted to and didn’t need to change it.

I looked over at the cupcake. I didn’t even want to eat it. I didn’t deserve to eat it. Nadia Cakes didn’t sell jumbos on a walk-in basis; they were a special order. He special-ordered this—for me. It was thoughtful.

It made me feel a thousand times worse.

I had to go back to the floor, but the letter gnawed at me all day. I kept thinking about it, about how to respond—because I had to respond. But in the meantime, I was going to avoid Jacob like my life depended on it, which wasn’t too hard because I think he was avoiding me too—and why wouldn’t he? I was the Wicked Witch of the ER.

Imagine being the reason why someone hated their new job. That was me. I was the reason.

On my lunch break I slipped into the supply closet with some paper I took out of the printer and wrote him back.