But sometimes keeping a promise wasn’t good or right. Sometimes, it was the worst thing you could do.
That night, I left my bedroom window open to hear Miller in case he showed up. All was quiet until nine or so, and then it sounded like someone crashing through the woods. I looked down to see him stumbling and mumbling to himself. Like he was drunk.
“Miller?”
He turned his face up and a gasp stuck in my throat at how pale he was. Ghostly white. Confused. Like he didn’t know who I was.
Oh God, this is bad. So very bad…
He mumbled something and fell to his knees. I climbed down the trellis as fast as I could, slipping once. My palms scraped the wood, then I hit the ground just as Miller turned on the faucet to our garden hose. He drank from it as if he were dying of thirst. As if he’d been in a desert for months. The scent of urine—his pants were dark with it—hit me, mingled with a fruity smell that didn’t belong there.
“Miller, wait… Please, stop.”
I reached to take the hose away from him. The way he needed it was terrifying—like a rabid animal, water flooding his mouth, choking him, spilling all over his face and shirt. He shoved me aside and kept at it until his eyes rolled up in his head to show the whites. Then his body went limp, and he collapsed to the ground, hard. Not moving.
A strangled cry tore out of me. My heart crashed against my ribs. I tossed the hose aside and crawled to put my ear on Miller’s chest, damp with water. He was still breathing, his heart still pumping but faintly.
“Someone help!”
The night was dark and swallowed my scream. I rocked in helpless desperation, feeling around my pockets for a cell phone I was sure I’d left upstairs.
It was in my back pocket.
“Oh, thank God.” My hands trembled as I dialed 9-1-1. “Hold on, Miller. Please. Hold on…”
They say your entire life flashes before your eyes when you’re about to die, but they don’t tell you that it also flashes when someone you truly care about might die, too. Like a movie on fast forward, I saw Miller’s funeral, the first day of school and me crying all day, sitting in my room alone…
It’s now two in the morning and I just got back from the hospital.
Yesterday, Miller drank a huge Gatorade like a frat boy chugging beer on a dare.
Tonight, he passed out in my yard while sucking down water from our garden hose as if he were trying to drown himself in it.
I called 9-1-1, and then Mom was screeching down at me from my bedroom window, and Dad was running around from the backyard. The firetrucks showed up, EMTs, and everyone was asking me what was going on. All the while, Miller lay in my lap, hardly breathing, not moving, his face pale as death.
They wouldn’t let me go in the ambulance with him, and since I had no way to contact his mom, he rode alone. He was all alone. On the way to the hospital, my parents grilled me about why Miller was outside my bedroom window late at night, and did this happen frequently, and just what the hell was going on?
And because my parents were my parents, they started screaming a
t each other that no one had been paying attention so now the “lawn boy” was sneaking into my room every night.
Good. Let them fight like assholes, because at least then they weren’t asking me about Miller.
But at the hospital, the cops asked. The doctors, a social worker… They all wanted to know about him so they could contact his parents while he was rushed into the ICU for who-knew-what treatment. Did he have a stroke? An aneurism? No one would tell me anything.
Crying until I could hardly see straight, I told them what I knew. That Miller’s mom, Lois Stratton, worked at the 24-hour diner on 5th during the day. I said she worked nights too, but Miller hadn’t told me where. That was mostly true, at least.
Where did he live? Address?
I cried harder as I told them he didn’t have one. I didn’t want to break my promise, but a part of me was relieved. Like maybe now, someone would help them.
I held a little bit of hope we could keep the kids at school from hearing about it, but one of the police officers was Mitch Dowd, Frankie’s dad. He would tell Frankie, and Frankie would blab it everywhere, riding around on his skateboard like he was Paul Revere.
In the waiting room, I silently told Miller I was sorry, but he could be mad at me all he wanted if only he’d wake up and be okay.
After what felt like years of terrified waiting, they finally told us. Type 1 or juvenile diabetes. Miller’s blood sugar levels nearly topped six hundred milligrams, and the term ‘diabetic hyperosmolar syndrome’ was floated by one of the doctors. I’d heard of diabetes, of course, but had no idea what the rest meant, except that he’d nearly died.
The doctors said Miller was stable. The police said they’d find his mom. There was nothing left to do but go home.