Three Brothers

by Nicole Williams

  Somewhere in the midst of his confession, I’d started crying again, but my tissue box was empty. By this room’s standards, I should have run out of tears already.

  “Hearing myself say it now, I realize how I might not have saved you much pain or many tears, but at least I saved you from being as permanently fucked up as I am. At least I saved you from that.” His last words were a whisper, almost a prayer.

  “God, Conn . . .” I didn’t know what to say. What did a person say in this kind of situation? The moment was cathartic and heartbreaking.

  “I’m sorry, Scout. I know what I’ve done to you doesn’t get to be excused and wiped clean with a couple of words, but I felt I at least owed you those—along with everything else I owe you.”

  When Conn moved from the doorjamb out into the hallway, I stood and went after him. “You don’t owe me anything else.”

  I felt like my throat was about to close up. All of those years, all of those hurts and regrets, had been nearly erased by one three-minute conversation with Conn Armstrong and the two words that had come from his mouth. Well, those words and the knowledge that he did care about me, in his way. When I opened my arms as I approached him, I saw him fighting it. I could sense he wanted to turn and run, but at the last minute, just when I thought I’d have to pry them open, Conn’s arms extended, and he let me in.

  “Thank you,” I whispered, letting my arms drape around him.

  I felt his move hesitantly around me. He hugged me like he was holding an infant for the first time or had a baby bird in his hands. It seemed like he was worried he’d break me if he made a wrong move.

  “Thank you,” he replied, letting me lower my head to his shoulder.

  Before I knew I’d started sobbing again, his shirt was drenched.

  “For what it’s worth, I hope it isn’t him. I hope it’s not Chance.” He sounded almost in pain. After his chest rose and fell a few times, he continued. “I always knew that if any of us had a chance in hell of deserving you, it would be Chance, and now that it seems you’ve finally picked the right brother, I don’t want to see you two split apart by something like this. I hope it’s not him.”

  One of his hands felt steady around me, as if it wanted to pull me even closer, while the other hung loose at my waist, as if it was waiting for me to leave. That had always been Conn’s and my story. But with everything he’d just admitted and what those words had healed, I wondered if our story could become something else. I knew we could never go back to the place we’d been in as teenagers, but maybe we could be friends. Maybe we could let friendship guide us instead of the anticipation of what might have been.

  Or maybe nothing would change. Maybe as soon as this moment passed, Conn would get right back to loathing me and throwing insult and injury at me. But no matter what Conn did, I knew that what I would do would be different. I’d never forget the conversation we’d had, the apologies that had been made, and the past that had been put to rest in the waiting room of the I.C.U.

  Winding out of my embrace, Conn backed away, and I let him go. As he headed for what I guessed were the elevators, he looked back. “For what it’s worth, I always loved you in the only way I knew how. And I always will. Whatever I might say or do, I’ll always love you in my own way.”

  I propped myself into the same doorjamb he’d just been hunkered down in and watched him until the elevator doors slid closed. He didn’t look back again, but I knew he felt me watching him. That was Conn’s and my connection. We instinctively knew each other almost as well as we knew ourselves, and because of that, we’d known just how to hurt each other. I felt like crying after he left, but at last, it seemed my tears had run out.

  That was how Chance found me when he shoved out of the I.C.U., his face somber and his eyes lost. Almost instantly, his smile formed when he saw me, but it was almost as quickly stifled. I knew why. It was the same reason my own smile had been extinguished before it got a chance to reach maturity. A secret was keeping us apart, an unsaid name preventing us from being free to do and say the things we needed to comfort each other. At the exact time he needed me most, I didn’t know how to be there for him. As the Scout he’d grown up with, his best friend? As a soul mate, the role we’d only just found ourselves in? Or as a sister, the part I hoped I’d never be forced to play in Chance’s life?

  Comfort should have been comfort, no matter what my role in his life, but for some reason, it didn’t seem so simple. I wanted to know how to comfort him. I needed a guidebook, and if we never got that name from John, I’d never be in possession of that instructional manual.

  “Do you want to see him?” Chance asked, moving toward me as warily as Conn had.

  I swallowed and nodded. “I thought they only allowed family in though. Are you sure it will be okay?”

  Chance kept coming down the hall, his brow lifting. “You are family.”

  I felt the silent thought that went through both of our minds then—just how much family was I to him? The kind formed by blood or by bond?

  “Do you think I should wait until Conn gets to see him first?” I moved toward Chance, hating how unsure I felt. I hated not knowing whether I should go to him or stay where I was. I hated seeing the same debate in his eyes.

  “I think Conn’s made it pretty clear he only wants one thing from our father, and it isn’t to say good-bye and make his peace.” Chance closed the gap between us.

  I thought how curious it was that when Conn should have been concerned with making his peace with his father, he’d chosen to make it with me. “Okay, then. I’m ready.” I ran my hands down my shirt, the one I’d chosen for my dinner with Chance last night and thrown on in a rush in his bedroom not even four hours ago. It felt like four lifetimes ago. I’d woken up to the whole world feeling right and like I was finally in sync with it, and now I felt like I was living in a cesspool of wrong and discord. “I think.”

  His arms rose as though he was about to pull me close to him, but at the last moment, they fell back. His hands slid into his pockets. “Scout.” With just that word, I knew what he wanted to talk about. “Sometime we’re going to need to talk about this. We can’t avoid it, hoping it will go away.”

  “I know.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “But can we just not talk about it right now? At least not until we know one way or another?”

  “You know that if Dad doesn’t wake up, which the doctors are anticipating, we might not know for a long time.” In the long, empty hallway, Chance’s voice sounded far away—as if he was shouting with a few blocks separating us. “I’m sure there are some DNA tests we could take, but they would probably take weeks to process. We can’t go weeks without talking about this. We can’t let Dad’s secret keep pulling us apart like I can already feel it doing, because either way, you’ll be in my life in some capacity. I’m not letting you get away that easily. I won’t let you go whether you are or aren’t my half sister.”

  DNA tests, I thought, feeling a fraction of relief that this secret wouldn’t have to remain so for long. I’d been so overwhelmed with what Mr. Harper had revealed to us that I hadn’t thought straight long enough to consider this wouldn’t stay a mystery forever thanks to advances in modern science. For a moment, a flash of relief flooded me. It was quickly chased away by something else.

  My eyes were still clamped closed, but I felt his hand curve around my neck, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. “We slept together, Chance. How can any amount of talking ever justify or rationalize or put to peace what we did if it turns out we’re related?” I knew I shouldn’t talk so openly in a hospital hallway where my words echoed off walls and traveled into rooms. Anyone could have been listening and forming opinions and judging us, but all I cared about were the two people in the middle of that hallway, both at a total loss.

  “That’s right, we did, and there’s nothing we can do to change it, so let’s just get that out there now. We can’t change what happened—all we can control is how we proceed. Once we know . . . what we are
to each other, we can decide on that future part together, okay?” He was having as difficult a time putting it into words as I was. Referring to me as his half sister seemed almost as impossible as it was for me to refer to him as my half brother. “But I need to know you’re not going to disappear on me again. That would break me into pieces far more than any test results.”

  Maybe I should have slid away from his touch, but instead I pressed my neck deeper into his hand. “I don’t want to have to figure out a different way to be together. I don’t want to have to redefine our roles in each other’s lives. I love the way our lives are now. I love having you in my life the way you were this morning when we woke up. I want to wake up that way every morning . . . but if we find out that . . .” I couldn’t say the word. I just couldn’t. I would have looked down a gun barrel before I could have said it. “I just don’t want to talk about it right now.” I just don’t want to talk about it right ever. I want to pretend I never heard Mr. Harper say what he did.

  Chance pulled me to him. His good arm fell to my waist and held me so close I was sure I’d never been embraced quite so intimately. His injured arm rested between us as his chin fell over my hair, fitting my head tightly against his chest. We stood in the middle of that hall for several minutes, saying nothing and just holding each other like that was the only solution we could find—grabbing on tight and never letting go.

  But eventually, he let go. “You should go see him. Just in case.” His voice wasn’t as removed as it had been, but it was sadder, and that was almost worse to hear. “The doc says he doesn’t have long.”

  I wiped phantom tears before lifting my head from his chest. “Okay, thank you. What room’s he in?”

  Chance’s smile was like his voice—sad. “The only room the doctors and nurses aren’t rushing in and out of.”

  “Why not?” I asked as my arms fell away from him.

  “Because there’s nothing they can do. My father’s last day on this planet is today, and no medicine or prayer can change that.”

  I leaned in and gently kissed his cheek. That might have been off-limits with what hung between us, but he needed it. “I’m sorry.”

  He nodded as he stepped aside. “So do I have your promise we’ll talk later? Once this is all done?” Chance waved his finger up and down the hospital hall, but I knew what he meant was once John had passed on.

  I didn’t want to agree, but I’d never found it easy to say no to Chance. “I promise,” I said before slipping past the I.C.U. doors.

  Chance was right—figuring out which door was John’s didn’t take long. The I.C.U. wasn’t busy, but a stream of nurses buzzed in and out of certain rooms. The room toward the end seemed to be given a wide berth though. That was where I headed. The scent of antiseptic was somewhat less pronounced in I.C.U. than it had been throughout the rest of the hospital, but something else lingered in the air here. I didn’t want to put a name to it, but I knew it nonetheless. It was the same scent I’d detected in the bathroom I’d found my mother in.

  None of the nurses seemed to notice me ghosting down the hall. I tried to swallow back the lump in my throat that didn’t want to be swallowed. When I was just outside his door, I paused with my hand on the handle. How did a person say good-bye to another? Not in the “bye, I’ll see you later” kind of way, but in the forever kind of way? I’d never had to say that before, and now that I was faced with it, I wasn’t sure what to do. How did I sum up years of thanks and apologies into a few short minutes? How did I explain to him just how much he’d meant to me? How did I explain how the secret he’d kept for so long was threatening to ruin two lives?

  The truth was I didn’t know. I could have kept standing there until next week, and I still wouldn’t know. The only way to figure it out was as I went. Shoving the door open, I stepped inside and left it open just a crack.

  John had a private room, and really, he didn’t look too different sleeping in the hospital bed than he had asleep in his own bed. He had a few more tubes, a hospital gown, and a monitor beeping beside him, but seeing him like that wasn’t as shocking as I’d anticipated. John had looked like he’d been straddling the line where life meets death for so long that little about the scene in front of me affected me the same way it did most other families of patients in the I.C.U.. The ranch had been its own type of I.C.U. preparing me for this moment—the moment when it was time to say good-bye.

  As I moved closer, nothing about the man I remembered seeing for the first time at Red Mountain could be seen in the man laid on that bed. He’d been a burly man who looked like he wrestled grizzly bears by day and drank sailors under the table at night. The man who smelled like tobacco and the outdoors, the one who could both frighten and comfort me in the same sentence . . . he was gone. This John Armstrong was unfamiliar, and I didn’t want my last memories of the man I’d cared for to be punctuated with this version of him.

  Grabbing the chair tucked into the corner of the room, I slid it toward the side of his bed. I half expected him to wake up and ask me to sneak him a porterhouse, but the other half of me accepted that he’d never wake again. The room was so quiet with nothing but the steady beeps coming from the monitor beside me. I knew that each one was like the sand in the hourglass. Like the grains of sand, John had a limited number of beeps.

  “Hey, John,” I whispered, sliding my hand beneath his. It was cool and lifeless. It didn’t curl around mine and give me a reassuring squeeze. After a few moments, the heat from my hand started to warm his. “I’m trying to figure out how to say good-bye, and I keep stalling because I don’t know what to say. But I can only stall for so long before I lose my chance.”

  I worked up a smile as I looked at his face. It didn’t come naturally, but he deserved one last smile. If I got nothing else right, I’d know I’d given him a real smile before he slipped from this world to the next.

  “I guess what I want to say is thank you. And I love you. And I’m going to miss you.” My hand tightened around his, but the squeeze was not returned. “I already do miss you.” I nearly choked on those few words. Lowering my head to his hand, I closed my eyes and let the words keep coming. “And I’m mad at you too. So mad at you. I’m mad at you and my mom for keeping this secret from us, and then deciding the best time for us to find out was hours before you leave us forever.”

  I felt my renewed tears dripping onto John’s hand, washing down his skin to be consumed by the blanket. “I know you can’t change it now—I know that—but I still can’t help but beg you that it’s not him. Please don’t let it be him, John. I already feel so lost, more lost than I did when I first showed up at your place, because this time I have something to lose. I don’t want to lose him. He’s the best part of my life, and he always has been. You know that. You saw it . . . so please, if there’s any good left in this world, don’t let the son you had with my mom be Chance. Please don’t take him away from me too.” My other hand joined the pile of John’s and mine as I prayed an odd prayer to an unconscious man. “Please, John, if you can hear me, please wake up for a minute or two and tell me the man I love isn’t the child you had with her. I lost her. I’m losing you. I lost Conn before I ever had him. Please, John, please don’t take away Chance too.”

  That was all I could remember repeating, over and over—Please, John, please don’t take away Chance too. Don’t take him away. Somewhere in the course of my unending plea, the day’s events became too much, and I fell into a deep, hard sleep. The kind where I wouldn’t have woken even if a fire alarm had gone off.

  AS IT WORKED out, a fire alarm didn’t rouse me—a still hand coming to life did. I didn’t really rouse either—it was more of a jolt. When I checked the clock on the wall, I saw I’d been out for a couple of hours. The sky was starting to lose its light. A second hand squeeze, so subtle I could barely detect it, made my gaze shift to John.

  His eyes were open. He was awake. I didn’t know whether to call for the nurses or ask him my question, but John decided for me.<
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  “Scout,” he whispered, his voice so broken it sounded more like Sout.

  “John?” I stood up from the chair, feeling sore just about everywhere thanks to the position I’d fallen asleep in. “Can you hear me?”

  His chest lifted, fell, and he nodded. His eyes were having a difficult time tracking me, and even once they found me, he couldn’t seem to keep them locked on my location for long.

  “I need to ask you a question. I need to know.” My voice trembled, but my hand in his was shaking so badly his whole arm quivered.

  John managed what looked like another nod.

  “My brother…” The words wanted to stick in my throat. “My half brother. Who is he?”

  The corners of John’s eyes creased, and the corners of his mouth twitched down. From the looks of it, this was a harder topic for him than it was for me. His mouth opened, but nothing came out. His chest rose as he seemed to gasp for air, his head rolling back into his pillow. My finger was on the nurse’s call button when his body relaxed. He seemed to have found the breath he’d been straining for.

  Death was one cruel bastard. Why couldn’t it just claim his life and leave the suffering out of it? Why did a person’s last days on Earth have to be taxed with such moments—like a suffocating man trying to gasp for air?

  “Is it Chance, John?” My voice sounded small, indistinguishable. “Is it him?”

  John’s forehead creased as a never-ending exhale left him. He didn’t seem to be struggling for breath anymore—it seemed as if he was stalling. I didn’t realize I was falling until my backside hit the chair, the air collapsing out of my lungs in one sharp rush. I wanted to cover my ears so I wouldn’t have to hear the name. I wanted to close my eyes so I wouldn’t have to watch him say it. I wanted to take back my question, coming into John’s room, and the whole meeting in John’s office. I wanted to take it all back, though that wouldn’t change a thing.