I am pacing in the hallway of this borderline boondock hospital out in the middle of nowhere, and it’s not really helping to calm my nerves. Eddie never told me any of his siblings were just kids; I never really showed an interest in knowing anything about them, though. I had not expected to see this young teen passed out in the summer house. After a few hours, a doctor comes out into the waiting room and approaches me. “So you are Nicks…what exactly?” the doctor asks me.

I’m honest with the guy. He apparently knows Eddie, so the situation is easy to explain. I tell him what’s going on with Eddie, and the man shakes his head. “Eddie is Nick’s legal guardian,” he begins, and my head starts swimming. Eddie never told me. It’s apparently a fairly new arrangement. Nick was supposed to be moving to LA this summer to stay with Eddie, but he was currently still staying with some foster family who in recent days, according to what Nick told the doctor, had had enough of him.

At first the doctor does not want to let me back to see him. I’m not kin in any way, but seeing as how Nick does not seem to have anyone else and I had been the one to save him from overdosing in an empty cabin, they allow it. I enter into the tiny hospital room where I see that Nick is thankfully sitting up in bed hooked up to an IV. He looks at me with this confused face. “Who the hell are you?” he asks, but there is not exactly anger or annoyance in his tone so much as curiosity.

“My name is James.” I begin, “I’m Eddie’s brother.”

“You’re not a Smith,” he says, “so you must be the legitimate brother, right?”

“I guess that’s me.” I say. I come and sit down in a chair near his hospital bed. “How old are you?” I ask.

“Fifteen.” He says, and it makes me sick to my stomach. He frowns, “So where is Eddie? Why did he send you?”

“I had Eddie’s phone when you called.” I say.

“So you didn’t tell Eddie what’s going on?” he asks.

The kid doesn’t know. I debate with myself whether or not to tell him what is going on, but ultimately I decide he deserves to know. I tell him about what happened to Eddie, and he has this horrified look on his face. He expresses worry about Eddie first, but then I can also tell that he is worried about himself. If he was supposed to be living with Eddie come this summer, what is going to happen to him now?

I think I know what Eddie would want me to do. I wind up staying at the hospital all day, calling and talking to local child services and hanging out with Nick in the hospital room until I finally get his case worker on the phone. She winds up coming to the hospital, and she gives Nick a berating about getting back on drugs. He looks embarrassed, and she makes a grab at his arms to see the red streaks. “What are you doing now?” she snaps, “First it was cocaine, now what is this?” she points at the streaks again, and he yanks his arms away from her and hides them against his chest.

The woman’s name is Donna, and she is actually not too snarky despite her tirade on Nick. I tell her what is going on with Eddie, and I can see stress lines appearing on her face. She probably thought everything with Nick was about to work out all perfect with a happily ever after bow on top. The two of us wind up out in the hall away from Nick to talk. “All of his remaining family members with the exception of Eddie have been deemed unfit to parent,” she says, referring to the circus show of random siblings I’ve met over the past week.

“Then let me take the kid home with me.” I say, “I might as well be family.”

“That’s not how all of this works.” She says, “And besides, you just met him today.”

“But I want to help. I can foster him at least, right?” I say, “I can do that. I could be a foster dad, right?”

“Becoming a foster parent requires a lot of background checks and-”

I cut her off, “Then do it. Do what you have to. This kid doesn’t need to go back into some random foster home. What he needs is therapy. He needs to be in an institution to help him get clean.”

She raises a brow suddenly, “You know,” she says coyly, “There is this really nice institution not far from here. It’s a private rehabilitation center… for the… wealthy. Nick would never be able to get in there, but if someone were to-”

I jump in quickly, “I’ll pay for it. Whatever he needs.”

Donna smiles, “That might just be enough for me to motion for Nick to be placed under your care. He would be able to get help while we are diving into getting you approved for temporary guardianship.” She smiles and then puts on a serious face, “Is there anything I should know about before I even bother working on all of this?”

I tell her outright about me getting arrested once in a bar, and I also tell her about the current lawsuit. She nods as though she is making mental notes of all of my delinquent behaviors that could pose a problem in this new arrangement. “Do you think Nick would even want to stay with me?” I ask after we have been talking for some time.

“What he wants and what he needs are two very different things.” Dana says, “Although, it would definitely help the case if he actually wanted to live with you. I recommend trying to get to know him over the next couple of days while I try to get going on this new arrangement.”

I nod, and Dana tells me to wait out in the hall while she goes to speak with Nick privately. Now I’m really nervous. Did I just try to adopt some kid I don’t even know? Yeah. That just happened.

After about an hour, Dana reemerges with a smile on her face. “I think this is going to be a good thing,” she says, “for some reason, Nick seems to already have taken a liking to you. Probably because you’re Eddie’s brother. Could you give me the name of the hospital Eddie is staying at?”

“Yes, of course.” I write it down for her. She takes a lot more information from me, including having the hospital photocopy my ID for her.

As she is getting ready to leave, I ask, “I know that Eddies and Nick’s father is not around, but what happened to Nick’s mother? Why is he in foster care anyways?”

Dana frown, “She shot herself after doing heroine when Nick was ten. She was a heavy user, and it just got worse with time. Nick was already in foster care at that time, though, after she got arrested for prostitution when he was six; she took him with her on jobs, so she obviously lost custody, but she always stayed in touch with him while he was in foster care. It’s weird to say, but deep down I think she could have been a good mom. She cared, and in the line of work I am in that is a rarity. At least she cared enough to stay in touch with him after he was taken away.” I guess by the look on my face, she can tell the brief story made me sick. She offers me a smile, “He’s a tough kid. Don’t worry too much. Let’s just be glad that when I told him about the institution he was somewhat willing.”

She gets additional information from me and has me fill out some paperwork before telling me she will be back in a few hours. The plan is for me to take Nick to the institution in the morning after he is checked out of the hospital. I tell my driver to go home and that I will just catch a cab back to LA once Nick is taken care of. The hospital staff lets me crash on the little couch in Nick’s hospital room for the night, and Nick and I wind up staying up late swapping stories about Eddie. He looks absolutely devastated to hear what happened to him. I am too.

The next morning, I woke up with a serious backache. Nick is asleep, so I decide to slip out and go to the hospitals cafeteria for breakfast. While there, I call Sylvia to update her on what is going on. She sounds concerned for me and for Nick, but I assure her everything is going to be fine. After talking to Sylvia, I catch myself calling Éclair too to let her know I’m going to be out of town for a couple of days. I have serious issues. Why do I feel the need to call them both?

I brush the confusing emotions aside and head back to Nick’s room after breakfast. My life is on a spiral. I’m just worried about what is going to happen next…