How to be supportive when you’re seething

Nino says he’s having a heart attack. I laugh. He walks into my apartment and says, “I’ll just sit here a little.”

I have to put my head in my hands to give myself time to get rid of my smile. He asks if I’m crying.

I’m pissed. It’s Z’s last day home before going back to school, and Nino’s obviously having a panic attack, because the only other person in his life besides me is Z. Nino came to my apartment every day while Z was here, and now Nino will go back to coming over four days a week. He’s panicking about going back to being a hermit.

I tell Nino, “I had chest pains a couple of years ago and thought it was a heart attack, and an ambulance came in six seconds. So be sure you want that if you call 911.”

He calls 911.

There are five people in my apartment. I stop an EMT in the doorway and say, “I really think it’s a panic attack.” She pushes past me.

I try to control my dismissive attitude. He once slipped and fell on the farm and I was like, I’m not coming outside. It’s too cold. Get the fuck up. He ended up dislocating his arm and going into shock and almost drowning in a puddle on the driveway.

Nino wants to call Z to give a long goodbye while the EMTs are taking his blood pressure. I’m like, fuck off, do not dump your anxiety on Z. You haven’t earned the right to do enmeshed parental trauma-dumping.

I don’t say that. I say, “Z will be worried. Let’s wait until we know if something’s wrong.”

While they load Nino onto a gurney, he asks me to go with him to the hospital. I load a backpack and follow behind, still pissed. I don’t want to miss Z’s last day. Nino would never have a heart attack if I wasn’t there. He loves being taken care of. That’s why we were a bad couple: we both needed to be taken care of.

At the hospital they ask what my relation to Nino is. I say ex-wife, because when I went to the hospital with him for the dislocated shoulder and said family, he yelled, “She’s not my family!”

The ambulance person wheels him into a corridor and says he hasn’t had a heart attack, but they will still check him out. Nino starts shaking and crying. I’m pretty sure he wishes he was having a heart attack, because now they might not help him.

I pat his shoulder, which probably seems minimal to you. But we never touch. Weeks ago I asked him why we don’t have sex, and he said, “It’s not that kind of relationship.”

Right now I want to remind him of what kind of relationship it is. But a nurturing tone gets the best of me: “You’ll be okay. There are lots of doctors here. They’ll make sure you’re okay.”

When I thought I was having a heart attack, I went to the hospital by myself and called the kids to remind them to practice. And that a tutor was coming. And what to make themselves for dinner. I’ve been alone for years, because Nino left. And now he wants me to be there for him. I’m infuriated.

People with a terrible childhood tell me they don’t want to have kids and I want to say just give someone else a good childhood! Now I’m being like those people. I didn’t have any support in the emergency room, so I don’t want to give any support.

But I don’t want to be this way. I get a tissue and wipe his eyes. I tell him about how good the doctors are. I lay a blanket over him and pull up a chair close to his bed.

They wheel him to get x-rayed. I’m alone in the chair in the ER. Festering.

You know that time we talked about sex? It came up because I wanted to tell him how much it means to me that he loves the kids. I said, “Remember that woman you dated?”

I started with that because I wanted to tell him that when he introduced her to me and the kids, she pulled me aside and said, “Nino really loves those kids. He has all the things they made for him, and their pictures, like a monument in his apartment.”

I said to Nino, “Remember that girlfriend?”

He said, “Which one?”

“What? You had more than one? How many?”

“I don’t know. Maybe three or four.”

“Why did you break up with them?”

“They thought I was a loser.”

“How do you know?”

“Well, one of them told me.”

“It’s weird to tell someone they’re a loser if you’re breaking up. It’s just added friction. She could have just said she was moving to Indiana or something.”

“We lived in the same building.”

I thought about how if I found out I was dating a grown man with two kids and lived in a single room, I’d break up with him too. Then I thought, maybe not. I mean, I don’t have a very good track record for picking.

Anyway, I didn’t think he wanted to get remarried, so I said, “Why were you dating?”

“Sex.”

“I didn’t know you wanted to have sex. I thought you were asexual or whatever the word is that the kids use.”

He says nothing.

“So why aren’t we having sex now?”

He said, “It’s not that kind of relationship.”

But when they wheel Nino back into the room, he’s so happy to see me. Everything goes into slow motion: he reaches out with his hand, and I can’t leave it hanging in the air, so I move my hand toward his. But I feel like his body is goop and that if I touch it, I won’t be able to detach.

“Thanks for being here,” he says, and squeezes.

I’m as bad as he is. I don’t want to be close to anyone but my kids. I’m not a full adult. I’m performing an adult relationship with Nino but not really having one. I just want to go back and be with Z. But I can’t leave Nino in the hospital alone because that would be bad role modeling for the kids. And I’d be establishing that I’m not taking care of Nino, which would mean the kids would have to, and they’re too young to live with that reality.

So I wait. And wait. Then we leave together. On the way to the exit, he projectile vomits – on the walls, on the chairs, on his shoes. I thank him for turning away from me. He says maybe he should go back to the ER. I hustle him into an Uber, he falls asleep on my sofa, and I make one final dinner for Z.

The next week, Nino and I are sharing a bowl of pasta for dinner. He tells me he went to the doctor and that he has to have his gallbladder removed. That was the pain in his chest.

I tell him, “I’ll go with you to the hospital.”

“Wait until I see if you need to go.”

“Of course you need someone to go. I’m happy to go.”

He says, “I’ll let you know if I need help. I’ll email you the date so you’ll have it.”

And there we are. The dance of getting close and running away. And getting close and running away again.

Nino was 18 when he had an operation for a hernia. No one went with him to the hospital. I was 18 when I went to Europe alone, with no money and no ticket home. We are each so used to being alone, and neither of us knows how to fix it.