Page 142 of My Unfinished Heart

“When you get better, will you take me to the place with the purple water?” he asked, talking about the painting again.

“Sure.”

“Is that where you go when you leave?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Is it very beautiful there?”

“Beautiful,” I repeated. “And safe.”

“Can we go tomorrow?”

“We’ll see…”

It was so much like a dream, I never counted it as a memory. Even in the days that passed afterwards, it faded and contorted as remembered dreams do. But as I look at the self-portrait of me on a pier, staring out at a sailboat distant on the gray and purple water, I do recall the painting disappeared from my room, and I had to paint Helen something else.

Connor receives ten different units of blood and blood products overnight. He gets his stomach pumped, he has two seizures, and when I finally arrive at the hospital, he’s in a medically-induced coma in the ICU, attached to a machine that’s breathing for him.

It’s almost exactly the condition I found him in when I came back to Austin four years before. The same near fatal blood loss, the same kind of ICU room. Weirdly, the same doctor. Only difference is this time, it wasn’t an accident.

Tristan is as close to my brother as he can get without climbing into the bed with him. He’s in a chair, holding Connor’s pale, thin hand, rubbing my brother’s fingers with his thumb. He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that I’ve arrived. Maybe that’s why I get so agitated. I’m up and down from my chair, in and out of the room, fidgeting and picking at my cuticles. Tristan has to close his eyes to block me out.

He gets a text around two in the morning and looks down at the phone on his lap. “My mom’s on her way,” he says.

“Good. Maybe when she gets here, I can take you home, and you can get some rest.”

He shakes his head, eyes fixed on Connor. “I’m not leaving, Archer.”

“You’re exhausted⁠—”

“I'm fine.” His eyes fill with tears again. “I need to be here when he wakes up. I have to stay with him. I’m all he has.”

Those words are as effective at shutting me down as ripping out my heart would be.

Despite all the things he’s said over the last two weeks diminishing the importance of this friendship, his love for my brother is still so complete. Daunting. And here I am on the outside looking in again, my face pressed against the glass, trying to see how it works, but unable to—this thing called unconditional love. It’s always just hidden from my view. Something getting in the way, blocking my line of sight.

I walk over to Tristan and kneel on the floor next to him, facing away from the bed so I won't have to look at Connor. “Just for a little while,” I say to him. “We’ll get a few hours of sleep and come back.”

He looks down at me with pure confusion on his face. “How can you even think about leaving right now? Or sleeping?”

“Please don't make it sound like I don't care⁠—”

“Do you?”

“Tristan—”

He turns his face away from me.

“What?” I ask, part of me begging for understanding, but the other part—the other part is angry.

He’s angrier. “He died tonight. Do you realize that? Your brother died. They literally had to make his heart start beating again. He was dead. Just a few hours ago, your brother was dead, and you want to go to sleep? I don't understand that,” he finishes in a whisper.

I stiffen and let go of him.

His face hardens beneath his glare. “Go. Go take your nap,” he says like a nap is the equivalent of shooting heroin. “I'll just be here picking up the pieces, like always.”

“That's not fair.”