“Call me tomorrow and let me know what his status is.”

“K, love you.”

“Bye.”

I walked to the small park around the corner from the hospital to get away from the sirens and the people in pain. I petted the leaves on wet bushes without pulling them off. Someone was yelling into their phone, “Don’t you fucking know who I am?” I thought of how I’d spoken to Aiden. Wasn’t that what men were supposed to do? Act like dicks so that other people respected them? How much poison had I swallowed? When I made R suck my dick, was I just acting out a patriarchal script? Did Blithe go unconscious because I’d had some wine? Or, worse, because I’d sent him too close to his own poisons?

Stop, Pen.

I went back to the hospital.

Aiden was staring at the ground.

“Okay, so I was going to call Blithe’s parents,” I said, “but then I realized that they might fly over here and take him back to L.A. and our mission would be over. If he did try to kill himself, though, we’re going to have to figure out their insurance info because the Rhiz won’t cover it.”

I left out the part about my responsibility for his possible suicide attempt.

Aiden looked at me, his face drained of its usual color. He nodded.

We sat together, thinking of Blithe’s loneliness.

A nurse came out, her white sneakers squeaking against the floor, and told us we could sit with Blithe for a while. Hospitals had revised their visiting policies after it was definitively proven that personal contact was its own medicine. The Rhiz had advocated for changing the “family only” dictum, and it worked, although the older queer community was melancholic. “If only a billionaire’s child had joined the Rhiz at the height of the AIDS crisis,” they said with sarcasm and rage.

Blithe’s room was shaped by white curtains. He looked like he was sleeping. His cheeks were flushed.

He had not woken up, nor was he in a coma, the nurse said, picking up a clipboard. “He’s completely stable.”

“Was there anything in his system?”

“We’ll know more when we get the blood tests back, but his body seems to be at homeostasis, which means in balance.”

I did not say that I knew what homeostasis was.

“Can we talk to a doctor?” Aiden asked, which was foolish. Nurses were generally more competent.

“The doctor’s been in, and these are her notes. She’ll be back for the morning rounds.”

She left after checking some of the machinery. We pulled two chairs up to his bed. If Blithe died, he would die unknown to me.

“You’re gonna be okay, bud,” Aiden whispered to Blithe.

I wondered who had been with him in his hospital.

After the nurse came by again, I kissed the top of Blithe’s head and squeezed his hand. Aiden whispered something in his ear.

We went home in silence.