Isaiah: Don’t freak out. I was in a car accident last night. I’m in the hospital but I’m okay. I might be in trouble though.

I tap the screen to call him but stop myself. One thing I’ve learned in the past few months is that Isaiah will spill his heart out over a text, but he freezes up about the same topic over the phone and in person.

Exhaling slowly, I reply to the text.

Me: What’s your room number? I’ll be there in twenty.

When I walk into Isaiah’s room and see him bandaged up and connected to all those tubes and wires, I’m thrown back in time. The same hospital, the same dark skin and broad shoulders, the same beeping machines.

No. Not the same. There’s no ventilator pumping up and down here, no machine forcing his lungs to do the work they won’t do on their own.

Tears sting the back of my eyes, and I tilt my face toward the ceiling to hold them back.

“Hold it together,” Marta says.

I was so distracted by the machines and my own memories that I didn’t even notice Isaiah’s grandmother sitting in the corner. I clear my throat. “Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s gonna be okay.” Marta’s voice is crackly on the best of days, but this morning she sounds even older than her seventy-five years. She might be hunched over her cane, and her ebony skin might be more wrinkled than smooth, but only an idiot would miss the shrewdness in those wise, dark eyes. “This might look like Max, but it’s not the same. Isaiah will be okay.”

“And what about you?” I ask.

“I’ve been better, as you can imagine.” Tears slowly trail down her cheeks. “I try to do right by this boy, but I . . .” She takes a ragged breath.

“You’re doing just fine.”

She shakes her head. “He drank half a case of beer before getting behind the wheel.”

“Five,” Isaiah says, his voice rough, his head lolling to the side. “Five beers.”

I draw in my own ragged breath and realize I didn’t expect him to be conscious—ridiculous, since he texted me himself and asked me to come. Maybe Marta’s right and my mind had already entwined his fate with his father’s. Not the same.

“I’ll go get coffee downstairs so you two can talk,” she says. “But he’s doped up pretty good, so don’t be surprised if he starts talking nonsense.”

I offer my hand, helping her stand from the chair. “I can hang out for a while. Why don’t you go home and get a shower, maybe take a nap in your own bed?”

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely.”

“You’re a good boy, Carter Jackson.” She squeezes my shoulder. “Isaiah, I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

“I’m sorry, Grandma,” Isaiah says. He forces his eyes open, but they only float shut again.

“You can apologize once you’re better,” she says. “That’ll be the only way I’ll accept it.” She hoists her purse up on her shoulder and gives me a nod before using her cane to help her out of the room. She leans into it more than usual today. Her arthritis is flaring up again.