Chapter 31

With difficulty, I pull my hand from under him and shove it into my jacket pocket, away from Joey and the temptation he creates in me. He’s such a distraction that I lay back across the foot of my mother’s hospital bed just so he isn’t in my line of vision anymore. As if seeing me for the first time, my mother leans forward to brush the hair back from my brow. “How are you boys holding up?”

Joey shrugs. “We’re okay,” I tell her. I glance around the room as if looking for something. “There is a doctor in this place, right? Someone who comes by every so often and checks your medical chart? Replaces the IV, reads the monitors, something?”

“Brian,” she admonishes.