I nod. “Sure,” I say. “Okay.” I keep nodding, as if this will somehow make everything fine. I glance at Uncle Gavin and see that his eyes are still on me. Slowly he raises a hand that’s attached to an IV drip and motions at me.

“Your uncle can’t speak with the tube in,” Dr. Lewis is saying. “And we need to get him to surgery, but you can have a minute with him.” The doctor murmurs something to the nurse, but I’m not really paying attention because I’m walking toward the bed, looking at my uncle. I don’t want to look at him. Not like this. He has tubes and wires running into his body and now has a stubby plastic tube sticking out of his mouth. It looks far too big to be there. His skin has the look of graying cheese. Maybe it’s the fluorescent lights making it look worse than it is. I hope it’s the lights.

“Hey,” I say, taking Uncle Gavin’s hand and gently squeezing it. “Uncle Gavin. You’re gonna be okay.” I hate hearing the lies come out of my mouth, but what else do I say? Fuck which heart valve you want, you look half-dead, you won’t even make it through the surgery.

Uncle Gavin pulls his hand out of mine and reaches out toward something behind me. I turn and see the nurse holding out a small whiteboard with a marker. “He can’t talk to y’all, but he can write on this,” she says. “But please make it quick.”

I put the whiteboard on Uncle Gavin’s lap and place the uncapped marker in his hand. Uncle Gavin closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them. He gazes at me steadily, waiting.

I say nothing until the nurse leaves the room to give us a few moments, and then I glance at the curtain that cuts the room in half. “Is anybody …?” I ask Ethan.

He shakes his head. “We’re alone.”

I look down at Uncle Gavin, who waits for me. Even with tubes running in and out of him and looking like death, his eyes are bright and focused on me. “I found Peaches,” I say to him. “And Tane Kamaka.”

Uncle Gavin makes a short movement with the marker on the whiteboard. He’s drawn a checkmark.

“Why did you want Tane?” I ask.

Uncle Gavin writes so slowly, the letters shaky. Stop gang war.

“Gang war? Between Peaches and the Sureños? Bala’s crew?”

Uncle Gavin nods.

“I don’t understand,” I say. “How could Tane stop a gang war?”

Uncle Gavin writes like he’s submerged in a tank of water, the movements slow and exaggerated. He draws a $ on the whiteboard.

“Money?” I ask. “I don’t understand. You … you had Peaches take him from the FBI. I thought he was a witness.”