The five-and-a-half-hour drive sucked. It was long enough for me to hate every second of it but not so long that it would’ve been worth trying to find a flight. I made it two hours into the drive before I realized that it might’ve been smarter for me to have gotten one of my siblings who lived in L.A. to drive me.
Smarter because that was when I started to get that hollow echoing sound, the tunnel vision, that warned me that a flashback or panic attack – or both – was coming. I pulled over, hating myself for having to waste time but knowing that it’d be worse if I tried to fight through it while behind the wheel.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to calm down. Focusing on getting to Israel and Nana Naz, of being there for them because Leo couldn’t, helped. I kept that in mind as I finished the drive to the hospital.
At the first red light I hit in the city, I texted Israel to let him know where I was, and he said he’d meet me in the lobby. He hadn’t called to give me any updates, but I was taking that as a positive sign. Plus, I doubted he would’ve left Nana Naz alone to come down to the lobby if things were that bad.
I refused to think of anything else.
When I entered the lobby, I spotted Israel right away. He’d always been a big man. Even though he was two inches shorter than me, he was broader, more muscular. The first time I’d seen him after Leo’s death, he’d looked older but still larger than life. Now, he looked…smaller.
The realization made my heart and stomach twist, but I didn’t let any of it show on my face. I had to be strong for Israel, had to be at least a fraction of the man Leo had been. I made a silent promise to my friend that if I had to give up everything in L.A. to take care of his dad and grandmother, I would.
“Thank you for coming.” Israel hugged me, and I wished he’d been able to put his arms around his son instead.
“How is she?” I forced myself to ask the question, even though I dreaded the answer.
“She’s resting,” he said as he stepped back. “C’mon. Let’s walk while we talk.”
As he led me to the elevator, he told me what’d happened. “She was starting dinner when she had to sit down because she was having a hard time getting her breath. She’d been sitting there for a couple minutes before I came in and asked if she was okay. You know Mama. She’s always fine. Except she said she didn’t feel right.”
That alone was enough to explain why he looked so ragged. I’d seen Nana Naz handle an entire church dinner while she had a kidney stone.
“I wanted to call for an ambulance, but she kept saying she just needed to rest, but then she fainted and that was it. I called 911. She came to on the way here, but she was disoriented, groggy. I was worried she’d had a stroke. Her dad passed from one when she was twelve.”
I hadn’t known that. “Was it one?”
We stepped off the elevator onto the ICU floor, and he continued, “No, thank the Lord. The doctors ran all these tests and said they think it was a combination of being dehydrated and her blood pressure dropping. They’re keeping her here at least until tomorrow because they’re having a hard time getting it back up.”
That was good to hear, but it didn’t make me less worried. Nana Naz wasn’t really old, but she wasn’t young either. And she’d had a stressful year. Hell, she’d had a stressful life, losing her only child, helping raise her grandson, and then losing him too.
“I thought about calling you and telling you that you didn’t need to come.” Israel stopped next to what I assumed was the door to Nana Naz’s room. “But, honestly, I wasn’t sure I could get through the rest of tonight and tomorrow alone.”
I knew what it cost him to admit that, which meant he was even more freaked out than I’d realized.
“I never should’ve left,” I said, shaking my head. “I promised Leo I’d take care of you both, and I can’t do that from six hours away.”
Israel gave me a hard look. “Where would the two of you be if my son hadn’t died?”
I frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Both of you planned to make a full career in the army, right? Even if you boys ever decided to get married, neither of you planned to leave the service this early.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Yeah, we’d still be in the army.”
“In that case, you could’ve been on the other side of the country or the other side of the world, and I’d be right here.” Israel put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m grateful to have you here, but I don’t want you thinking that this means you have to stay in San Ramon for the rest of mine or Mama’s lives. I’d tell Leo the same thing.”
The fact that I knew he’d have done just that didn’t make me feel any better, but I didn’t argue with him. I wasn’t here to prove a point.
Nana Naz was sleeping when we went into the room, and while she looked peaceful, she also looked frail with an IV in her arm and an oxygen tube in her nose. I’d always thought of her as some unstoppable force. Invincible.
People always talk about how teenagers think nothing can touch them, but I think most forget that when we’re young, we think all the stable people in our lives will be there all the time. The loss of a mother I didn’t really remember and my time in the army had changed both mindsets pretty fast, but the reality of Nana Naz’s mortality hadn’t really hit me until that moment.
“The doctor said her oxygen is pretty low too,” Israel said quietly as we made our way to the chairs next to her bed. “He asked me if she was a smoker, and all I could think was that day she caught you and Leo smoking.”
I smiled at the memory, surprised at how little it hurt to think of it. Leo and I were in sixth grade when, for a reason I couldn’t remember, I decided the two of us should steal a pack of cigarettes from these racist high school kids who never missed a chance to get after Leo. Once we’d taken the cigarettes, I’d gotten the bright idea that we should smoke a couple, just to show the world how tough and grown-up we were.
Nana Naz had caught us and smacked us both upside the backs of our heads. Then she’d made us tell Israel and my parents. She hadn’t, however, made us apologize to the guys we’d stolen them from. About that, she’d merely said that we should’ve let the air out of their bike tires too.
“None of it had been Leo’s idea,” I admitted. “Not taking them and not smoking them. I know what he said, but it’d all been me.”
“We knew.” Israel chuckled. “Most of the time when you boys got in trouble, it was your idea, and he went along with it.”
I grimaced at the memory. “I still have no idea why you never told him not to hang around with me.”
“You’ve always had a good heart, Eoin,” Israel said. My face must’ve showed my thoughts on that particular statement because he smiled. “You know that Angel and I were high school sweethearts, but I bet you don’t know that we almost didn’t make it.” He looked at Nana Naz, a faraway expression on his face as he thought of her daughter, his late wife. “Six weeks before our high school graduation, a friend of mine, a boy I’d known since birth, was killed in a drive-by shooting. Cops dismissed it as gang-related violence and never really did much to find out what really happened. Thing was, Nate wasn’t in a gang. He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong thing with the wrong colored skin. We both were. I was just the lucky one who didn’t get hit.” He glanced at me. “As you can imagine, I didn’t handle it too well.”