Page 43 of Devil

An ER tech with gauged ears, pink hair, and a name tag that says Tobie finds me pacing in front of the faded play area with its chipping paint and empty plastic house and leads me to a room where Birdie is waiting on the bed in a hospital gown, looking unbearably small. Her face is pale with fear, and when I walk over to take her hand, it’s trembling.

“I’ve got your boyfriend for you,” Tobie says cheerfully. The tech goes to the other side of the bed and checks the pulse oximeter on Birdie’s finger and then the saline bag hanging from the IV pole next to her. Everything seems to be in order because Tobie leaves with a promise that the doctor will be in soon.

There’s something warm moving in my chest as the tech swishes the curtain closed but leaves the glass door open, and it takes me dragging a chair over to the bed and finding Birdie’s hand again to realize what it is.

Boyfriend. They called me herboyfriend.

I like that.

“Were they making sure I wasn’t abusing you?” I ask. I still remember thedo you feel safe at homechecklist every time Mom had to come to the emergency room during her final months.

“Yes,” Birdie says. Her voice is thin and her eyes are bouncing between the monitors and the curtain separating us from the shared desk. “They also asked if I had thoughts of hurting myself. As if I don’t know any better,” she adds sourly.

I lift my eyebrows at that. “Any better than what?”

“Than to answer that question for real,” she says, exhaustion in her voice. Her hand is still trembling.

I pause. “Doyou have thoughts of hurting yourself?”

She doesn’t look at me when she answers too easily, “Of course not.”

“Little bird.”

“I’m a good Catholic girl. I believe suicide is a sin. I’m not going to kill myself, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I wish she would look at me. I wish she’d tell me the truth, or some of it anyway.

But I decide that I believe her about the Catholic thing. It wasn’t enough to keep my sister safe from her own pain, but it very well could be enough for Birdie. Her intense connection with her faith might as well come with a gold leaf halo around her head. And I think she romanticizes suffering—or at least still believes that it’s useful currency in some grand cosmological exchange. Like divine mercy is a 501(c)(3) that can only operate on donations, never generating any mercy on its own.

“Did the questions upset you?” I ask. “The ones about you? Or the ones about me?”

I’m not bothered by her wondering if she should have given different answers to the latter. I’d be worried about her sense of self-preservation if she didn’t consider asking for help, actually.

“No,” she mumbles. “I’m upset because I hate hospitals.”

I wasn’t expecting that. “Really?”

She finally looks over at me. “You don’t?” Her lips are alarmingly pale, but her oxygen saturation is okay, and the chux pad they put under her leg has only a little blood on it, so I manage to keep myself from finding the doctor and dragging them in here myself.

“No. I feel safe in hospitals. Someone’s always awake. I’m afraid of the dark, you know,” I inform her with a flash of my dimple.

Her mouth twitches—almostamusement—and I feel like I’ve won a prize. “I don’t believe you. You are not afraid of the dark,” she says.

“Well, I used to be.” I run my palm up her forearm. God, she’s shaking all the way up to her shoulders. I’m surprised her teeth aren’t chattering. “I got sick in high school—a mat burn from wrestling that turned into a staph infection and then septicemia—and I was intubated and put in an induced coma for a week. At some point after they woke me up, I must have told my secret to the nurses. They protected my adolescent pride by pretending to leave the bathroom light on or turning on the TV before they left. Sometimes they’d keep the door open. There was always a light on, always someone to hear if you needed them. It was nice.”

Her eyes drop to her lap, where her free hand curls limply upward, the finger with the oximeter curled more than the others. She swallows. “I don’t like that there’s someone to hear. They’d hear my mom or Busy, and then—” She’s shivering even more now. “I used to wait for hours and hours. Or sometimes I’d be back there with them, not even in a room but a space with curtains for walls, and I’d always be waiting for bad news, that they were taking Mom or Busy for an involuntary hold or that there weren’t any beds at this shelter or that rehab, and I’d be trying to keep my mom or sister calm, and sometimes they would be calm, and sometimes they wouldn’t, and the worst part was that sometimes I’d feel…relieved…when the nurses had enough and got out the Haldol.” She’s crying now, trembling and trembling. The blood pressure reading above her head is flashing red. “That’s what a hospital turns you into. Someone so tired that you’ll do anything for a little bit of quiet. Someone who’d give their own mother the shot just so it wouldn’t be…so…awful?—”

“Birdie, Birdie,shh.” I’m crawling up on the bed with her now, careful of the IV line and the oximeter and blood pressure cuff. She resists at first, quaking, sobbing, stiff, but I don’t stop. I arrange us so I’m sitting behind her, her back resting against my chest, my legs on either side of hers. I make sure the pad is under her leg and tuck the blankets back over her. She tenses, holding herself away from my chest, but I feel the moment she gives up, slumping back against me, still crying.

I don’t tell her to stop. Her sadness scratches at something vital in my chest, and I vibrate with the need to fix it…but this is also the most she’s ever spoken at once to me, the most of herself she’s ever shown, and I refuse to tarnish that vulnerability by telling her what to feel or how to act.

She can feel anything she needs to, do anything she needs to; she can cry or scream or howl, and I will eat the liver of anyone who tries to stop her.

I reach around her and take her hand in mine—the one without the oximeter but with the IV. Her whole hand is cool from the saline drip, and I turn it so it’s resting in my palm and her palm is facing up. It’s impossible to miss how much bigger my hands are than hers like this.

I nuzzle into her hair as I use my free hand to stroke a circle on her upturned palm. A circle about the size of a knot of wood. “Why did you turn the angel into the devil?”

She sniffles. “What?”