The lady at the front desk—mountainous, sleepy—told me to have a seat.

“Shit’s on the verge here,” I said. “Look at her.”

“Sir,” she said. “Everything is on the verge of something.”

The whole gang of waiting-room people was there— a wild-eyed white guy with a mustache and a chest wound, a half-asleep black man who seemed to be wearing a floral bedsheet, an Asian woman exhaustedly clutching a comatose child. I declined feeling like a part of the cosmic web that contained them. If they were anything like me, they had brought this on themselves. But I was wrong about the Christmas decorations: there weren’t any. Tricia took slow, labored breaths until a nurse came and put her in a wheelchair.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said.

She wheezed something that sounded like “blood traffic.”

I sat there and looked at pictures of Melanie on my phone—Melanie holding a pumpkin, Melanie next to a stranger’s miniature husky—until I’d scrolled back to the beginning of our relationship, represented by the dim interior shots of my apartment in Durham before I rented it. Then I turned my phone off, in case my mother woke up and tried to call me.

“Christopher?” the nurse said, an hour later. “Brother? Would you come back with me, please?”

I followed her through the swinging doors. Patricia was in a bed with railings, hooked up to an IV, eyes closed. A gawky young guy in a white coat was standing next to the bed. A doctor, I guess.

“So, Steven?” he said. “Your sister’s had a serious allergic reaction, probably to something in the cocaine she was using.”

“Right,” I said. “How is she?”

“She’s stable,” the doctor said. “We’ll see how things look in the morning.”

“Can’t we go sooner?” I said. “Like, now? It’s Christmas.”

“Are you a drug user, Steven?” the doctor said.

“On occasion. Recreationally, I mean.”

“Well, you might want to think about that. If your sister hadn’t come to see us, she could have ended up in a very bad place.”

“Dead?”

“Let’s just say it wouldn’t have been good.”

“No, seriously,” I said. “I’d like to know the full fucking extent of my negligence.”

The doctor kept a patient smirk on his face.

“Sure, she could have died,” the doctor said. “Lucky for her she has such a responsible brother.”

Well, that triggered my despair, which I have a real problem with.