Page 27 of Hunter's Hidden Camera
With some difficulty, I get up. I manage to stumble into the house, and after poking my head in every room I find out that my brother isn’t here and it seems like he hasn’t come back home yet.
I have to put together a plan of action. Because action must be taken.
After a hot shower (and getting water all over the bathroom because there’s no curtain), I reach for my towel and dry myself off. When I step out of the shower, I almost pass out again. This is getting bad. I think I actually have to go to the hospital. But in my condition, I probably shouldn’t drive.
I manage to make it to my bedroom. My alarm clock says it’s 7:30 a.m. Oscar and Victor won’t be here for another two hours. I could try to call Oscar on my home phone, but I know he’s not up this early on Saturday. Neither is Victor. I’m actually surprised that he said he was coming over at 9:30 a.m. On weekends, those bitches are dead to the world until at least noon. They’re almost as bad as I am. Well, actually, no one is as bad as I am when it comes to oversleeping. I sleep a lot. Maybe too much. But there are other things to worry about right now.
Since the hospital is just a few miles from here, I decide to walk.
After about forty-five minutes (I don’t know exactly because of my dead phone), I reach Point Liberty Memorial Hospital. I follow the signs to the emergency room.
An old man with big glasses at the reception desk asks me why I’m here.
“I hit my head last night, and I think I might have a concussion,” I tell him.
“Fill these out.” He pushes a clipboard toward me. “It’ll be a while before anyone can see you.”
“How long?”
“An hour. Maybe two.”
“But I’ve been passing out. I think I really need to see someone as soon as possible.”
He doesn’t bother to look up from his computer screen. “Thatisas soon as possible.”
He points to the waiting area behind me.
I look, and I’m surprised to see so many seats taken this early on a Saturday morning.
He continues, still without looking: “That man severed his finger while cooking. That woman broke her ankle when she fell off a balcony, drunk. And that baby has a fever in the hundreds. You? You can wait.”
I take the clipboard and sit down. After filling out the forms, I return them to the old man.
I wait.
After about an hour of me just staring at the wall and obsessing over the terrible things that happened yesterday, a tall nurse with long blond hair tied back in a ponytail, in her thirties, approaches me. I think it’s my turn, but she gives me this odd look, like a big smile, which seems inappropriate and unprofessional for an emergency room.
“Hunter?” She can’t stop smiling.
“Yes.”
She doesn’t say anything else. She just stands there, waiting for me to say something back.
I stare at her.
Her shoulders slump a bit. “Oh, my God, you don’t remember me.”
Then, all of a sudden, it hits me. It’s my cousin Patricia. She’s the daughter of my Aunt Doreen (my mother’s older sister). Patricia is one of my (probably gay?) relatives who I see at family functions and who gets whispered about by the other family members.
Patricia used to babysit Nash and me when we were little. I remember her coming over a lot when I was in elementary school and she was still in her twenties. I had so much fun with her. I always thought she was the coolest person because she could talk with me about anything that I happened to be interested in at the time: dinosaurs,Star Warsmovies, the Olympics. And she displayed affection towards me in ways my mother, father, and brother never did. Patricia never underestimated the comfort that can come from a reassuring pat on the back, a gentle touch on the arm, a hug.
But sometime in the middle of third grade, she suddenly stopped coming to the house, stopped babysitting us. She was replaced by some other girl that my parents hired from an agency or something.
When I asked my mother what happened to Patricia, I was told that she got too busy with other things. This made me quitesad at the age of nine—not so much because she got busy, but because she never said goodbye.
I also stopped seeing her at family gatherings for years, for almost a decade actually. It’s only within the last year or so that she’s shown up at a couple funerals (Grandma Muriel and Grandpa Brody). She came with her roommate, Jo, who, if the rumors are true, isn’t really a roommate. And she didn’t really talk to me, except for a quick hello.
“Patricia,” I say. “I didn’t know you worked here.”
