Max was gently prodding me awake.

I blinked my eyes once, twice and then kept them open after what felt like the heaviest and most relaxing sleep ever.

“Hey there, sleepyhead,” he said and kissed my shoulder.

Stretching my limbs long and then yawning so loud I could have woken up the dead, I looked around me to get my bearings. It was still pitch dark in Max’s bedroom with only the light from the sleeping city outside his window filtering in. Sitting up onto my elbows, I wasn’t sure what day it was much less what time it was.

“I would have let you keep on sleeping, but your cellphone has been blowing up for the past ten minutes or so.”

This had me more than slightly freaked out. It was always a given that if anyone was calling in the middle of the night, it was never good.

“What time is it?” I asked alarmed, hoping upon hope that it was just me being a worry-wart.

Max confirmed it was almost two o’clock in the morning. Wrapping the sheet around my body, I swung my legs off of his mattress and like a crazy person, began to dig through the piles of clothes we had strewn across his floor until I found my cellphone.

Max wasn’t kidding.

I had five missed calls. Two of them I recognized as coming from my brother’s phone, which scared the shit out of me. The other three calls came from a number with a seven-one-eight area code that I had never seen before in my life. I was officially freaking out.

“Is everything okay?” Max asked. He came over to where I was crouched down on his floor trying my hardest not to have a panic attack. “Do you need me to do anything?”

“I don’t know what’s going on yet, Max, but I’m about to find out.”

I tried my brother first.

“Eddie, answer your goddamn phone,” I practically yelled into my phone to nothing but a ringtone. As soon I went to his voicemail, I disconnected the call and tried again. “Pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up.”

“Daphne, maybe he butt dialed you or something?”

“Max, nobody butt dials anyone that many times in the middle of the night.” I took a big gulp of air, expelling it out in such a rush as I stood and started pacing that I almost felt lightheaded. “I can’t even call my grandmother to see if she knows anything because one, if it’s a mistake, then I’ll have woken her up for nothing. Then again, if it is something, I can’t wake her up to worry her to death since I’m not there to calm her down.” I brought my thumb to my mouth and nervously chewed the cuticle contemplating calling back the other number that had been calling me when my cellphone started buzzing in my hand.

“Well, aren’t you going to answer it?”

I still didn’t know who this number belonged to. Just that it, along with my brother’s phone, had been calling me too. It scared me to death to answer it, picturing all sorts of awful scenarios in my head of what could be the problem, if any. But, taking one last glance at Max who was sitting up in the bed and looking at me as if I was the world’s craziest person, I pressed accept on the call.

“Hello?” I croaked into my cellphone “Who is this?”

“Ms. Rodriguez?”

“Yes. Who is this?”

“Ms. Rodriguez, this is Candace Martin at New York Presbyterian Hospital. I’m calling on behalf of—,”

“Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! What happened? Is she okay?”

My mind immediately had gone to my grandmother and the tears started to fall.

“Ms. Rodriguez,” the woman’s monotone no-frills voice broke in quickly. “You are listed as next of kin to a…” she paused and I could hear paper rustling in the background. “A Mr. Eduardo Rodriguez. Is that correct?”

It felt as if someone had snapped a rubber band inside of me. My mind went blank, my hands and feet went numb, and my heart tripped over itself as it began beating at an uncontrollable speed in my chest.

“Why?! Oh my God! What happened?!”

Tears were now falling fast and furious. The woman on the phone was talking but I was having a full on panic attack and just shy of hyperventilating so I couldn’t make out a single thing she said. Somewhere between me yelling “Noooo!” over and over, Max came over to where I was, grabbed the phone from my hand and started talking to the woman instead.

I collapsed into a heap of sheets on the floor, crying and trying to catch my breath, while Max spoke. There were a couple of things I made out. One of which was Max asking, “He’s fine then, correct?”

All things stopped, even my breathing as I locked eyes with Max. His smile was there but faint and after what felt like an eternity, finally he gave me the thumbs up as he kept talking to the woman on my cellphone for a minute.

“Hang on, Miss,” he said into the phone and then covered it with his hand. Crouching down to where I was still a mess on the floor, he told me as calmly as possible, “He’s okay, Daph. Your brother is just being held overnight for observation. He got into some sort of car accident and has a slight concussion.”

As if he had snapped his fingers, the panic cleared from my head with his words as I fully processed them. But then it was replaced by pure unadulterated anger. “A car accident?! How does he get into a car accident when we don’t even own a car?!”

“Daphne, did you hear the rest of what I just said?” Max asked, ignoring my questions. “Your brother is fine. He’s going to be totally fine and released in the morning. But since he’s a minor, they needed to contact his next of kin. That’s you, sweetheart.”

“Max, but we don’t have a car! I don’t understand how this could have happened!”

He reached out and tucked some hair behind my ear, a sweet smile playing on his lips as I could see his patience wearing thin. “Let me find out, okay?”

I nodded.

Max got back on the phone and after a minute of him saying “uh-huh” a few times to the woman on the other line; he came back to where I was. Thankfully, I had gained some sort of control of my breathing by then. Little help that was since I was about to lose my ever-loving shit with what Max had found out.

“Sooo, it sounds like your brother was involved in a police chase because he was joyriding in a car that had been reported as stolen earlier today. When the cops got close enough, the car your brother was in lost control and ran off the road. And—,”

“What?!”

“Daph, I wish I was making this up, but I’m not,” he said calmly as if he was trying not to spook me any more than he was. “Listen, here’s the good news.”

“Good news?! You’re kidding, right?!”

I buried my head in my hands as I envisioned my brother’s supposed bright future being flushed down the toilet because of this disaster. It was heartbreaking and infuriating how in a matter of minutes, everything in my life had turned upside down.

“Daphne, yes, there is good news.” Max reached out and gently lifted my chin up to look at him. “According to the nurse on duty, your brother didn’t know the car was stolen.”

My eyes narrowed as I tried to process this bit of information. And I knew, I just knew what was coming next. My heart raced, thumping away in my chest as Max explained further.

“The person driving didn’t tell your brother he had stolen the car. Apparently, the drive has admitted to the police that your brother had no idea what he was up to and was just going along for the ride.”

“That little piece of shit,” I seethed under my breath.

Because I knew exactly who the mystery driver was. It was that mojon, Joey from the neighborhood. Upset wasn’t quite the right way to describe how I was feeling. I was beyond that. I had reached some other ungodly level of pissed that wasn’t even created yet.

“Hey, are you okay?” Max asked, breaking me out of the murder plot I had running in vivid Technicolor in my head. “I have to let this lady know that you’re heading over to the hospital since you know, you’re the next of kin. But I need to know you’re okay to do that.”

I was far from okay.

It wasn’t even funny how far away from okay on the okay spectrum I was at that moment. But, I also was an adult and like the person at the hospital said, Eddies’ next of kin. So, I took a big gulp of air, put on my big girl panties and stood up. Squaring my shoulders and for the moment, ignoring the huge knot in the pit of my stomach, I told him unequivocally, “Yes, I’m okay. And tell them I’m on my way.”

Max arranged an Uber for me that I eventually agreed to. Only because he was adamant about me not taking the subway at this ungodly hour, and two, because he was threatening to drive me himself in a car he admitted he drove maybe once or twice a year. When he told me this I was in the middle of getting dressed like a mad woman in his clothes, because mine were too “club-like” according to Max. He was right, of course. But man, oh man, I was swimming in his track pants and sweatshirt. And his flip-flops were practically flopping off of my feet but they were much better than heels at this point.

He had wanted to come, but as soon as Max brought up the idea of tagging along, I shot it down real quick. Was this really the way I wanted him to meet my family? Hell no! It was embarrassing enough that I got that call while I was with Max. And this thing with us was so new…well, technically not too new. But it was definitely new enough that I wouldn’t feel comfortable to have him around while dealing with family drama.

My Uber driver was a slightly older woman, which was nice. Not that Uber driver AKA serial killers couldn’t be women, but the odds were much more in my favor to survive a ride with a total stranger this way. It definitely made me more relaxed to be sharing her car for almost forty-five minutes. We didn’t talk much either. Which was fine by me, because I was too preoccupied with all the things I had on my mind about my brother. Not to mention I had yet to get in touch with my grandmother. I figured she must still be asleep and thankfully hadn’t woken up to see if my brother was home…hell, even if I was home. A feeling of guilt crept in and settled somewhere around my throat, choking me to near tears as I worried about how my grandmother would take the news about Eddie.

“Here. Take,” the Uber driver said to me as she handed me a tissue. “I’m sure it will be okay, yes?”

“Thank you.” I locked eyes with her in the rearview mirror. “That’s really nice of you to say. But I’m not so sure.”

She spoke with a heavy European accent. But even through the accent, I could hear the genuine concern in her voice. “We have saying in my country, what doesn’t kill you, makes you strong.”

I chuckled. “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

“You’ve heard it before. Good. It’s true. You see.”

“Well then I ought to be a strong as an ox by the time tonight is over and done with.”

She laughed and her kind eyes were shone with understanding in the rearview mirror. At this point, I could tell by my surroundings that we were just a few minutes away from reaching the hospital. I took the opportunity to text Max to let him know I had arrived and would update him later. He responded almost immediately.

Max: Glad to hear you got there safe and sound. Please keep texting me updates.

His concern brought a smile to my face and loosened the knot of dread in my stomach just a teeny-tiny bit. When I looked up, the larger than life, bright red, emergency room sign was like a beacon in the darkness straight ahead.

“Right here.” I said, pointing out my window to the circular driveway that led right to where I needed to be. “If you don’t mind, can you drop me off close to the emergency room entrance?”

“Of course,” she answered. “Good luck and hope everything is okay with your family.”

“Thank you, I really appreciate it.”

She pulled up as near to the actual double doors as possible. And once she came to a full stop and parked her car, I was already opening the door to let myself out and started sprinting towards the entrance. It was quiet outside and felt almost desolate, but once I was inside…well, that was a whole other ballgame.

It felt like I had arrived in the middle of nuclear meltdown or something. Behind the main desk, there was hospital staff running around from one patient to another. There were a few policemen around along with the regular security guards that were stationed right at the front desk. Not to mention the waiting area had a nice crowd doing just that…waiting. There were a few people stretched out across several bucket chairs taking a nap, or at this time of the night, technically flat-out sleeping. I couldn’t blame them. It was almost three fifteen in the morning. I was running on pure adrenaline at this point. Especially given how zonked out I was thanks to Max, it was nothing short of a miracle that I was awake and not passed out on one of those bucket chairs too.

At the front desk, there was a woman with the closest thing I’ve ever seen to an actual beehive that would rival Amy Winehouse’s hair. It was more than oddly shaped too and the closer I got to her and her hair, the more obvious it was that it was actually leaning and in danger of toppling over. When she addressed me finally in a monotone, nasally voice, you could tell she hated every bit of this job.

“What is your emergency, miss?”

“Oh no, it’s not me that has the emergency,” I said in a rush of breath. “I, wait no, that’s not right. My brother, he was admitted here tonight. I don’t many details other than he was in a car accident, which is like crazy because it’s a school night and he’s supposed to be home studying or something. But no, instead he’s off driving around and—,”

“Patient’s name, Miss.”

“Huh?”

Without an ounce of expression on her face, she slowly pulled a pen out of her beehive. I blinked once, twice, wondering what the fuck else she was going to pull out of there.

“What is the patient’s name, Miss?”

“My brother’s name is Eduardo Rodriguez.” While she looked his name up in the database, I kept on rambling nervously. “He’s just a kid, you know? A stupid-ass kid, but a kid nonetheless. Sometimes I want to choke him to death, but—,”

“Daphne?”

I looked up from the front desk, turning around to find the woman’s voice, almost melodic and sweet as sugar that had called out my name. She had on a pair of navy scrubs and a white doctor’s coat. Her brown hair was pulled back into a low bun but some tendrils fell forward and framed a beautiful cherubic face. And from the slight crinkle in the corner of her eyes, I instantly felt a sense of calm come over me so overwhelming, that I started to get a little emotional.

“Oh no, please don’t cry,” she said, coming straight for me and pulling me into a hug. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. But, if you need to cry it out, go right ahead and cry it out. It’s good for the soul sometimes and like I always tell my patients, sometimes life just gets the better of you, you know?”

“Thank you,” I said while choking back my tears as much as possible.

But then it hit me, all of it and how I ended up here in an emergency room in the middle of the night. In between my crying, I managed to talk a little bit to try and find out who this person was and how they knew me.

“Who are you?”

She chuckled, as I made no qualms about wiping my face on her white coat. Pulling back to get a good look at her again, she answered. “I’m Avery Allen. Max told me you were coming here and wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Max? How do you…wait a second. Did you just say your last name was Allen?”

She nodded. “I’m his sister-in-law. He called me as soon as you were on your way to make sure you and your brother would be in good hands.”

“But I don’t understand. Why didn’t he tell me before I left that you worked here?”

“I don’t technically work here. I’m covering for a friend’s shift tonight who was under the weather.” Avery smiled and then started to pat down her pockets looking for something. When she found it, she dug inside and pulled out a few tissues to hand them to me. “Here you go.”

After taking a few calming breaths, I blew my nose so loudly that it would have made Louis Armstrong proud. With the heels of my hands, I wiped my eyes and then my cheeks clear of the tears that had fallen. Honestly, it was only a matter of time before I lost my shit at some point today, tonight, whenever time this was at this point. After the night I had shared with Max, which already had my head and my heart in a duel for what, I wasn’t sure. One part of me felt something for Max that I hadn’t felt in such a long time that it was beyond terrifying. But the other part of me…was just plain terrified of where it was headed with him.

“I still don’t understand why Max never mentioned you would be here before I left.”

Her smile turned a little conspiratorial and in that moment, I knew that I would be fast friends with Avery. She made me feel so comfortable and so safe, that I almost forgot why I was here to begin with.

Leaning in, she whispered, “You didn’t hear this from me, but he didn’t want you to think he was pulling strings on your behalf. He told me you might take it the wrong way.”

“Avery, you are pulling strings on her behalf and you know how much I hate that.” This came from the Amy Winehouse impersonator behind the front desk. I had completely forgotten about her. To me, she said, “Ms. Rodriguez, I assume you won’t be needing me anymore, correct?”

“I, well…I don’t…”

“Doris,” Avery cut in, “I’ll take it from here. Thank you so much for all your hard work.”

“Mmm-hmm,” she responded with a smirk.

Avery pulled me into her side, wrapping an arm around my shoulders like she was a mama bear and I was her little cub. Normally, I wasn’t one to be mothered since I was usually the one doing the mothering. But there was something about this woman that put me right at ease and made it impossible not to let her take care of you. She started to lead me towards the patients, where hopefully, I would finally get to see Eddie.

“Don’t mind Doris. She doesn’t mean anything by it.”

She went on to explain how she was a nurse practitioner and her friend from her residency days, Maddie, who was also a nurse practitioner and usually the one on duty here tonight, had fallen ill with a bad case of strep throat. That’s how she coincidentally ended up working the overnight shift all the way here in my neck of the woods.

“Please tell me that Eddie is okay? How much trouble is he in?” I asked her, growing frantic the closer we got to my brother.

“He’s fine. Totally fine.” Avery stopped us from walking any further and turned to face me, the look of utter calm coming over her features. Over her shoulder though, I could see a police presence concentrated around one in particular patient station on the other side of the emergency room. She noticed me noticing what was going on, but kept on explaining my brother’s condition and treatment. “He has a minor concussion and some cuts and bruises, but that’s it. He’s very lucky that it wasn’t a lot worse.”

“That’s such a relief to hear, you have no idea. When I got the call, I thought…well, you don’t want to know what I thought,” I said. I had to choke back some emotion that started to bubble up in my throat with the mere mention of what I initially thought had happened. Don’t think I would be forgetting that phone call and my reaction any time soon.

She reached out and soothingly patted me on my upper arm. “I understand. Say no more. How about I take you in to see him right now?”

Letting Avery lead me, she made sure to fill me on how my brother was terrified of having to call me in the middle of the night. “Yeah, well, he should be terrified. He knows better than to hang out with that, that...punk who got them into this mess in the first place.”

“Trust me, I don’t think your brother is going to be hanging out with that person any more after tonight.”

“I really hope you’re right about that, Avery. Not sure if I can much more of this bulls—, sorry, I meant to say crap. Dammit, I don’t mean to curse, honestly. It’s just I’m so worked up, you know?”

Avery chuckled. “I totally understand, Daphne. No need to apologize. I’ve heard much worse. From Max, no less.”

We abruptly stopped in front of a curtain that was semi-open. Avery turned to me and smiled that smile of hers again that made me feel safe and at ease with the situation. In that brief moment, I made a mental note to send her some flowers or a card or something to convey how grateful I was that she stepped in to ensure my little brother was taken care of. It spoke volumes of the kind of person she was. Not to mention thanking Max for making sure I was taken care of.

“Eddie, it’s Avery again. Are you decent?”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Eddie answered.

Avery then pulled the curtain completely open to reveal my brother, lying in his bed, partly propped up with a few pillows behind his head. He was wearing a hospital gown and had a bandage around his head that made him look like a forgotten experiment from a mad scientist’s laboratory. But what struck me the most was how much Eddie reminded me right then of how young he truly was. I mean, yeah, he was about to graduate high school, God willing that this whole disaster hadn’t messed that up. But, he was still just a kid. And that realization hit me like a ton of bricks. It made me emotional all over again as I crossed the threshold to stand by his bed. Meanwhile, Avery had begun checking his vitals and asking him some random questions like what day it was, how old he was, and finally, what his name was. He answered them correctly with no hesitation, thank God.

“How are you feeling?”

“My head still hurts a little,” he answered. “And my arm’s sore, but that’s pretty much it.”

“All right, good,” she told him. “Your vitals all look normal, so that means a few more hours in here and you’ll be free to leave now that your sister is here.”

With that, Eddie turned his attention to me. It took him all of one point five seconds to breakdown and start crying. Naturally, I got choked up too and started tearing up again.

“I’m so glad you’re okay, Eddie.” Leaning forward, I gingerly hugged him, trying extra hard not to jostle him around too much. “If something worse would have happened to you, I swear, I don’t know what I would do.”

“I’m sorry, Daph, I didn’t know. I swear it.”

“Shh, it’s okay.”

“It is?”

Pulling back, I wiped my eyes a little as Eddie was doing the same. “Well, no, technically it’s not okay what you did. But I get that you didn’t know and didn’t mean for any of this to happen. But, we can talk about that later, okay? Right now, I just want you to get out of here. We’ll deal with the rest tomorrow or the next day.”

“Okay,” he said. “Did you call abuela yet? Does she know?”

“Not yet, but I’m going to have to let her know soon.” I glanced at the standard issue clock on the wall, grimacing when I noticed how we were that much closer to four o’clock in the morning. “Now that I’ve seen you for myself, I feel a little better about calling her this late.”

“How much do you want to tell me, ‘I told you so’?”

Sighing as I rubbed the back of my neck, I tried my hardest to fight off the smile, but he was right. I wanted to say that to him. Badly. But, it wasn’t worth it at this point.

Eddie had his whole life ahead of him and he would still need someone to help guide him. That person was me; I had to make sure he was on the right path. So why should I rub it in when he made a mistake? I hoped he knew he messed up, learned his lesson, and moved on with this life.

A commotion broke out somewhere in the emergency room so loud and so sudden, that it scared the shit out of my brother and me. It happened so fast that we were all caught off guard. Then I remembered the police presence that I had noticed when I first got here and breathed a sigh of relief, thinking if anyone was causing trouble, the cops would handle it.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asked, trying to sit up.

“Stay still,” I told him. Looking to Avery, I asked, “Do you need to go and check that out?”

She had already poked her head around the edge of the curtain that gave us a bit of privacy in the emergency room from the other patients. Popping back inside, she finished typing in the rest of whatever updates she was doing to Eddie’s chart, the corners of her mouth upturned to her serene smile. In what I had to guess, was her usual look. It made me instantly relax…again.

“Seems your little friend, Joey, is causing a bit of trouble for the residents. I’m going to head over there right now and see if they need any help.” Avery moved so smoothly, looking serene as she gathered up her things. “But I’ll be back soon to check on you again and ask you a whole new set of stupid questions, okay?”

Eddie chuckled. “Okay. Please tell Joey to cut the—,” he looked to me and then shrugged his shoulders. “Cut the shit before he gets himself into more trouble.”

“You got it,” Avery told him before ducking out completely.

As soon as she was gone, Eddie went on to tell me what I already knew about this disastrous night with Joey. Apparently Joey had texted him telling him he had just bought a new car and if he wanted to go on a ride with him. He agreed. And it wasn’t until Joey had started speeding and swerving in and out of traffic that Eddie felt like something wasn’t right. Sure enough, the police started following them and a chase ensued. Joey panicked and started driving really erratically then and confessed to him how the car was actually stolen. Next thing Eddie knew, Joey had lost control of the car on an attempt to make a sharp right turn, skidded out and started spinning until they hit another car head on…luckily, not going too fast. But fast enough to cause some damage.

“Man, if I don’t ever get in a car any time soon, I’d be totally okay with that,” he said. Outside of our little private area, the commotion with Joey grew louder and more frantic. “I bet Joey’s just figuring out how much trouble he’s in.”

“Yeah, well, he’d probably be a lot better off if he let them do their thing instead of being a jerk about it.”

As I pulled my cellphone out of the sweatpants pocket to text Max an update, the commotion got so loud it was actually frightening and then, yelling started. As clear as day, I could make out that the yelling was coming from Joey. Something about how he wanted to get out there right then and there. We also heard a man’s commanding voice tell him to calm down and to take it easy. Then, like a stampede of cattle, some patients in their gowns and hospital staff were walking very fast away from the commotion and towards the front desk. It was difficult to make out what was being said then or what was even happening. So, being the nosey person I was, I went to find out for myself.

“Hang on, I’ll be right back,” I told Eddie and started for the edge of the curtain. I ran right into a police office before I could take another step. “Oh, I’m so sorry, excuse me.”

“That’s okay, ma’am. If you would please get back to where you were while we sort this situation out.”

“Sure, of course.”

And as I turned on my heel, I heard Joey yell, “Fuck you!”

This was followed by a blood-curdling scream from a woman that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up on end. Some glass shattered and then one gunshot rung out into the silence followed by two quick gunshots. The cop that I had run into had pulled me to the ground and covered my body instantly. The only thing I could make out was my own heartbeat ringing in my ears like a bass drum. It was beating so loudly that it blocked out everything else happening around me. After a few more seconds of being crouched on the ground, the police officer slowly moved up off of me and offered me his hand to stand up. In slow motion, I managed to look up and see that Eddie was okay; he was freaking out and yelling, but about what, I didn’t know. My adrenaline had kicked in and up to a whole other level and it was still drowning out any other sounds around me.

It was a little like being in a tunnel. As I went through that tunnel, slowly reaching the end of it, the sights and sounds started to come back to me. And that’s when I remembered…Avery.

“No, no, no!” I yelled and ran like a woman possessed.

I made it as close as possible to where the turmoil had been coming from. When I got there, my mid-section was yanked back by a freakishly strong arm that I didn’t know who it belonged to. I only knew that it was keeping me from making sure Avery was okay.

“Please! Let me see!” I shouted. “Avery? Are you okay? Avery?”

Nobody answered me.

Nobody needed to.

Because a beat later, the curtain was pulled back just enough to reveal Avery’s lifeless, bloodied body lying in a rumpled heap on the floor next to Joey’s. As if it was some twisted and cruel joke, the curtain was moved just as fast to hide what I had seen.

But it was too late.

There was no way I could ever forget or erase that visual from my mind. It had already imprinted itself onto my brain. The look of fear frozen on Avery’s face would be playing in my nightmares for years to come. Time came to a screeching halt. Someone picked me up and carried me away from it all.

A scream broke out and rose above the commotion.

It was me. I was the one screaming. The whole time I was being carried away somewhere, I screamed and screamed not even recognizing my own voice.

And I couldn’t stop…Avery was gone.