this was excruciating. It was bad enough remembering what had actually happened the night before. But Esther thinking it had been a botched public suicide attempt was somehow even worse.
“Es, please, listen to me,” I said fiercely. “That’s not what it was. I just had a bad night. Something… happened. I was just trying to get drunk and forget about it. It wasn’t smart but it wasn’t anything bigger than that either. Just a bad night.”
“What happened?” Esther asked, her eyes narrowing in concern.
“It’s not important. It was a one-time thing. It won’t happen again. Trust me.”
‘It's not important’ wasn’t true, exactly. It was important—to me. But if word of what had happened with Ellis hadn’t reached Esther yet, if it wasn’t written in the sky over New York City, I didn’t see the need to enlighten her. I wasn’t out to anyone at that point. Well, except for the 20 or so people who’d been within earshot when Ellis had let loose.
But to anyone else? No. I was awkward enough as it was. I’d known I was gay since I was 12 but high school—hell, even elementary school—had been hellish enough when people just thought I was gay and tormented me for it. I didn’t need to go confirming their suspicions and making everything worse.
And my family wasn’t much better. My mom was chronically checked out, abusing whatever benzo prescription she was taking at the time, my stepfather--well, the less said about him, the better, but my stepbrothers were pieces-of-shit bullies whose favorite activity was beating me up. And my father? The best that could be said about him was that most of the time, he wasn’t home.
Esther was the only person I could have come out to. And rationally, I knew she wouldn’t care, knew she’d still love me. But old habits die hard and I wasn’t ready to spew out the contents of my heart only hours after doing the same from my stomach.
Besides, the rest of what I’d said was absolutely true. It wasn’t going to happen again. Because not only was I never going to talk to Ellis again, I probably wasn’t going to date anyone else until I was at least, say, 80 years old.
“Adam, this isn’t the kind of thing you can brush off,” Esther said. Back to the big sister voice. “Even if you didn’t mean to do it. Adam, people don’t just take half a medicine cabinet’s worth of pills with a chaser of bourbon if there’s not something seriously wrong.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I spit back. Except I knew that wasn’t true either. There was a lot wrong with me, but I didn’t need anyone else reminding me, thank you very much. “It was just an accident. You’re making way too big a deal out of this.”
“Too big a deal?” Esther’s eyes were on fire. “Adam, you could have died last night.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said, wincing internally at the way that echoed Ellis’s words. “I’m sure it wasn’t—”
“Fuck you, asshole,” Esther interrupted. “I’m a fucking doctor and if I tell you you almost died, you have to listen to me. You stopped breathing. They had to intubate you. Pump your stomach. You were—” she stopped, tears welling up in her eyes. “It was a lot closer than you realize.”
I felt awful. All my life, Esther had just tried to take care of me and all I did was resent her for it—mostly because I didn’t want to admit that maybe I needed to be taken care of. It wasn’t like our parents had ever filled that role.
“Es, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean for, well, any of this to happen.”
“Well I didn’t go through four years of medical school and three years of residency just to have my shithead little brother question my medical opinion,” she said, her face softening. “You’re not dying on me, you hear that?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, smiling faintly. “Got it.”
A nurse stuck her head into the room.
“You’ve got another visitor. Says his name is Justin. Want me to send him in?” she asked with a sunny smile. I wondered if I was one of her patients, if she’d seen my chart and was judging me. And then an even worse thought occurred to me.
“Es, did you call Mom and Dad?”
Esther glared at me. “I called everyone I could think of Adam. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. I called everyone whose name I recognized