Page 85 of Near Miss

I cut him off with a flat look. “Just watch the game, Nathaniel.”

“Won’t we get into trouble for this?” Nathaniel leans forward, hands gripping the edge of the exam table, crinkling the paper lining it.

I point to the IV pole and saline bag. “You’re the one who drank a bottle and a half of wine to themselves. Would you rather be cripplingly hungover tomorrow?”

“But they won. Beckett kicked a 65-yard field goal. That’s two yards away from the record. I needed to celebrate.” He scrubs his face before giving me a hopeless look, eyes wide and glassy. “Aren’t we stealing?”

“Calm down.” I grab the saline and flash the date at him. “They’re at the end of their twenty-eight-day life cycle. They’re medical waste tomorrow.”

Nathaniel blinks, like he’s still unsure. I widen my eyes at him as I rip open the bag with the butterfly clip. “Don’t worry. I’ll take the fallout of any nonexistent trouble.”

He nods, watching me in silence as I hang the bag and prep the needle and tubing. “Arm,” I instruct.

He holds it out obediently, and he hesitates, his next words wavering. “Our parents—they don’t see him. They just see Sarah, and they see me because they associate me with the people who saved her. But I see him. Sarah sees him. We just don’t know how to be around him.” He pauses as I tap at his arm, looking for a vein, and wipe it down with an alcohol swab. I watch him swallow in my periphery. “You see him.”

I do see him, I think. And I feel a bit like telling Nathaniel that he needs to do a better job of showing Beckett the love he deserves. But I pause, tip of the needle poised to press into hisvein, and I look up at him. He looks a bit like a lost child—golden hair falling every which way, tie abandoned and buttons of his shirt undone. “He loves you both very, very much. And he just wants you to love him, too.”

He shakes his head, a detectable slump to his shoulders. “How do you even start to thank someone who’s given you what he’s given me? He sacrificed his childhood so I could have one. My dad didn’t teach me to ride a bike. Beckett did. He paid my rent when I was in school, so I didn’t have to worry. I didn’t have to work summers so I could just study for the MCAT. He’s paid for everything Sarah’s ever needed. He used to wash her wigs for her, and he learned how to braid hair. He bought our parents’ house because they’d mortgaged it so many times because they were always on leave from work. Thank you seems inadequate. How do I even—”

“You just do, Nathaniel. You say the words and you follow them with action. Your brother deserves that, at the very least.”

He deserves the world. He deserves more than someone like me can ever give him, even though there’s this tiny part of me blooming, sprouting in and amongst the empty space that says maybe we can be whole for him without carving ourselves away.

But I think all of those things wilt when I remember I was with my dad in a room not unlike this one in the not-so-distant past.

One corner of his mouth kicks up. “You’re not being mean to me. Why are you so scary at work?”

“There was a reason you wanted to go into pediatric oncology, right?”

He nods.

I smile, angling the needle down. “There’s a reason for everything I do, too.”

He winces at the pinch, and I think, my words. “Beck never said anything.”

I shrug one shoulder, pushing down on the needle before releasing it and connecting the line to the IV bag. “I can’t imagine he would have.”

Nathaniel looks down at his arm, before holding it up to me with a triumphant grin. “Hey, not even a drop of blood. You’re good.”

I raise my eyebrows. “I know.”

He stares at me, the set of his jaw so like his brother’s it’s alarming, his next words low. “He started keeping his phone on.”

“What?” I wrinkle my nose.

“He used to keep his phone off at home. Sarah and I—we aren’t stupid. We know he puts himself under this immense pressure to be everything to everyone all the time because he had to be when we were younger and it’s all he’s ever known. He’d turn his phone off when he was at home, and he’d joke about it, saying nothing was that urgent or serious. I think he just wanted to be ... free, for a little while. But he started leaving it on after he met you.” Nathaniel gives his head a small shake. “He might be your friend, but you’re not his.”

I don’t know if he’s really mine either, I think. And that’s what I’m afraid of.

Because whatever this is keeps landing us—me, my heart and my brain—in rooms like this one.

But I give Nathaniel a flat look and tap the bag of saline.

“Let the IV run until it’s empty. Eat and drink something when you get home and take two Advil tomorrow morning.” I grab my bag from where I abandoned it on the chair in the corner of the exam room, my heels clicking against the tile floor, but I look back at him before I leave, fingers tapping against the doorframe. “You can call me Greer.”

Beckett

I’ve never been one of those athletes with intense pre- or post-game rituals.

---