“You want the truth?”

“Of course I do, Janelle.”

“You’ve been drinking so much for so long, Lewis. . . . Do you realize you’ve been in this hospital for four days?”

I just look at her. Four days? That’s impossible. I got here last night. Didn’t I? But my sister wouldn’t lie to me, and all I can do is shake my head.

“Anyway, the alcohol you’ve been consuming all these years has finally caught up with you. The doctor said it’s destroyed your platelets—the stuff that clots your blood—and when you came in here your level dropped all the way down to forty in just a few hours.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, I’ll put it this way: they said a normal level is about a hundred and forty to four hundred.”

“Oh,” I say. “So I fucked up.”

“No, you didn’t just fuck up. You almost died.”

“You serious, Janelle?”

“You want me to go get the doctor and have him repeat it?”

“No. Don’t.”

“You’ve got twenty-two stitches in your head and six across your eyebrow, and your right shoulder’s been fractured.”

I know my head feels like a watermelon full of boiling seeds and my eye like it’s being stretched; I can’t lift my right arm, but I still say, “Is that it?”

“No, Lewis, that’s not ‘it.’ You better take your ass to AA every single day for the rest of your life or you’re going to die, for real. And it’s no joke. We just lost our mother, we don’t want to lose you, too.”

“We?”

“Your sisters. Your family.”

“Don’t worry. But, Janelle, please don’t tell me you told Paris and Charlotte and especially Daddy?”

“I just got the call a few hours ago myself. From some girl named Luisa. She said she’s the one who called the paramedics, because she was dropping off some homemade tamales for you and she said when she saw those guys running and everything, she recognized one as her brother, but then she said, when she saw you down on the ground like that, she was so scared she ran and called 911, but didn’t know what else to do until today, when she went over and got your key and looked around your apartment and found my number. She said she remembered me because she saw the note I left on your door about Mama way back in the spring.”

I just stare at the light-blue wall behind my sister. And then, just for the record, I say, “I almost died for real, Janelle?”

“You could have. Yes.”

“And Mama’s dead,” I hear myself say.

“Yes she is, Lewis. She’s been dead for almost two months. Two long months.”

“I need to talk to her, Janelle.”

“We all need to talk to her, Lewis, but we can’t, all right? So get over it.”

“Get over it, huh?”

“You know what I mean. Look. I’ve gotta go look at an apartment today, and if all goes well, my daughter can come home in a few days.”