Time did not pass. A nurse turned off the TV and no one argued. Children behind me were drinking soda and I wanted to scream at their parents.

Aiden arrived much later than he should have. “How’s he doing?”

I held up my hands.

Aiden started pacing and then swung around to the front desk. “They don’t know anything. He’s stable, though,” he told me.

I grunted.

The lights hummed, and I knew that if the hyped-up kids behind me jostled my seat one more time, my self-restraint would evaporate.

“I’m gonna grab a coffee,” Aiden said. “You want something?”

I glared. “Yeah, I want you to fucking just be here. Not sauntering around, not coming an hour late, not trying to save the day.”

He didn’t move. “It’s the hospital, man.”

“What? What’s the hospital? Yeah, we’re in the hospital. With Blithe. Blithe is in the hospital, and we are supposed to sit here and completely lose it while we wait.”

He leaned over and put his head in his hands. “I was in one. For a while.”

Damn it, Pen. Guns-blazing anxious rage was not helping.

“Fuck, I’m sorry.”

He didn’t say anything.

“If it isn’t obvious by now, I’m scared,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“I’m going to call his parents,” I told Aiden.

I went outside and called Margot.

We had a standing phone call every Sunday evening, which I’d skipped while at Rita’s.

Normally, I made sure I had enough anecdotes gathered in case the silence started hurting. Not this time.

“Penfield, what’s wrong?” she asked, and I could picture her sitting on her chaise longue, playing with her tablet. She refused to talk to me via video after six.

“It’s my friend. The one I was helping in the desert. He’s unconscious.”

“Oh, Pen. Which hospital are you at?”

“Poncy.”

“That’s good.”

“Is it possible for someone to go unconscious without taking something?”

“Without overdosing?” She always disarmed me with her directness; Margot never couched anything in the casual sloppiness of contemporary conversation.

“Right.”

“Well, it’s unusual for an otherwise healthy man in his thirties—which I’m assuming he is—to go unconscious.”

“He’s trans, if that has any bearing. And he’s not exactly healthy.”

“What’s going on?”

“He has some mental health things.” I needed my vagueness.

“I see.”

“Do you know anyone here? Anyone who could check in on him?”

“I do have an old friend who’s sometimes at Poncy. A surgeon. I don’t really know what she could do—”

“Just. Come on.”

Aiden had his hang-ups about hospitals, and so did I. Before my top surgery, Margot and I stopped speaking after she’d refused to come to New York for the operation. Sid came, as did Jillian. I’d woken up from anesthesia, put my hands over my numbed new chest. The whole region shook. What would happen if I lost my substitute guardian?

“Okay,” she relented.

“Also, make sure you get the head night nurse to keep the notes.”

“I will. Thanks.”