by Emily Belden
I spot Brian, who has made himself rather comfortable on a
bar stool sipping what looks like a Shirley Temple. “Gee, did I really take that long in the bathroom?” I say when I reach him.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist peeping at this game. And the ninety-
nine-cent Shirley Temples. Want one?”
“No thanks.”
“I can safely say this is the first time I’ve picked a farmer’s market over watching a baseball game. It’s Dodgers versus
Yankees. A Coast-to-Coast Classic is about as exciting as it
gets for the MLB.”
“We can stay and watch if you want,” I suggest.
“Nah, let’s boogie. Shall we go?”
From across the bar, I see Steve and his V-neck-clad friend
enjoying the baseball game and splitting a bucket of beer. I
can’t help but wonder more about Steve. Is this the best it’s
been for him? Or the worst? Is this wheelchair thing just a
necessary inconvenience due to a recent ACL surgery? Or is he
completely paralyzed from the waist down? If Decker some-
how could have survived his accident, could this—in time—
have been him and… Brian?
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For an early one-year anniversary gift, which is supposed
to be paper-themed, I bought Decker entry into a race called
The Mad Men Mudder. It was featured in Men’s Journal as one of the best courses “for guys with serious balls.” Even
though that descriptor was my cue to sit this one out, he was
so stoked that I registered him—and even more stoked that
Brian was able to get a bib too before the race sold it. Decker didn’t train much, didn’t need to. An athlete his whole life,
he would have no problem running three miles in thick mud,
crawling through a thousand feet of sludge, and biking a rug-
ged trail, all while dressed in a suit and dress shoes like a character from the TV show Mad Men. If I were to be concerned about anyone making it out of the race with their limbs intact, it would have been Brian, who at that time was still rocking
a bit of a beer gut Dad-Bod.
On August first, the morning of the race, Decker kissed me
goodbye just like he always did before going somewhere—
work, the grocery store, out with his friends. A minute later,
he came back in—he’d left his Cliff Bar and banana on the
kitchen counter—and gave me another kiss. Then he returned
once more. “What’d you forget this time?” I asked, amused by
his forgetfulness. “Nothing,” he said. “Just wanted one more
kiss for good luck.”
I texted him shortly after because I forgot to ask what time
he thought he’d be done. Noonish , he said. I volleyed with: Lunch after? He replied back: Chipotle . And my craving for a burrito bowl instantly kicked in.
Alone in the house that morning, I treated myself to a
Postmates delivery of a McDonald’s breakfast sandwich on a
biscuit and noshed on it mindlessly as I read all the latest celebrity gossip on TMZ. A controversial outfit Beyoncé wore
to an awards show, a feud between teenage rappers, the details
of a celeb’s tumultuous divorce—this was the kind of stuff
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Decker would make fun of me for caring about. So I enjoyed
my guilty pleasures by myself, wiping my buttery fingers on
my plaid Old Navy pajama pants in between blog posts.
When I finally read what felt like every gossip article on
the internet, I checked my phone and saw several missed calls
and texts. None were from Decker, but all of them were about
him. They ranged from “Have you heard from Decker?” to
“Did you hear what happened to Decker?” to “Cedars Sinai.
ICU. Now.” My phone had accidentally been on silent.
Before I could figure out my next move, there was knock-
ing at the door. When I opened it, Brian—donned in pristine
race attire, not a speck of dirt on him—put his hands on my
shoulders and told me the worst thing had happened. Mo-
ments after the starting bell, Decker had collapsed twenty feet from the line and was rushed, unresponsive, to the hospital.
Flash forward a week and Dr. Brandt was asking me: “What
do you want to do here, Mrs. Austin?”
“Why are you asking me that?” I said as I paced the width of the hospital room, which was exactly nine footsteps.
“Well, I’m afraid we’ve come to that point and you’re the
next of kin, Mrs. Austin,” he said, glancing at his chart. His
face looked like the chubby old bald white guys from the vin-
tage game Guess Who?
Next of kin. Three simple words I never thought would
rise to the top of the list of adjectives that accurately described me. But somehow there I was, standing next to a trauma doctor I’d only met a few days before, being told that my husband
of less than a year was unconscious and unable to specify his
DNR wishes, which was medical speak for: He’s not going to
make it without this machine and you can’t take it home with you, so now what?
We discussed it as a group—me, my parents, Decker’s par-
ents, the medical team—ad nauseam. But the more we talked
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about it, the more confused and stuck I became about the
whole situation. What were we waiting for? A miracle? The
doctor told us Decker wasn’t going to make it. Was I the only
one who had heard him?
“What are the chances he’ll go back to being the way he
was, that everything will end up being fine even if it takes
months? Years. Whatever,” I begged Dr. Brandt to get real
with me one last time.
I could smell my own breath at this point—it stunk of vend-
ing machine coffee and Fritos.
“All of our tests show less than 1 percent.”
What is less than one? I asked myself. Zero. What is zero?
Nothing. How had my husband— my everything—turned into
nothing?
What was less than 1 percent of Decker? Was it a man I
would love? Was it a man who would want to be alive? That’s
when it hit me: everything that made Decker Decker was gone.
Miracles were off the table, I had come to accept that. So I
looked at it like a math problem instead, heartless as it sounds.
That was the moment I became a technically minded woman.
That was the moment I was finally able to say: “Okay, Doc-
tor. Let’s call it.”
“Char? Should we go?” Brian asks again, waving at me to
zone back in.
“Yeah, sorry. Let’s roll.”
As we saunter down the main road, I can’t shake seeing
those two guys watching the game. At the risk of sounding
crazy, maybe even a little creepy, I ask: “Did you see that guy at the bar? The one in the wheelchair?”
“The one who was in the bathroom before you?”
“Yeah, him.”
“Sure, what about him?”
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“I know
this is going to sound weird, but he looked like
Decker, didn’t he? Same vibe and all.”
“I mean, I guess. Similar hair color.”
“What if…what if Decker could have ended up like that
had I just given him more time to heal?”
“Ended up like what exactly?” Brian asks.
“You know, like, that guy. Remarkably okay and normal
considering the circumstances. I mean, that dude was just out
with his friend—and that friend could have been you. They were just watching basketball, sharing a bucket of beer, hanging at the bar. Total dude stuff. What if Decker could have
recovered like that and I never gave him the chance to? God, I never should have signed him up for that race.”
“Hey, let’s not panic here, okay? The stroke he had could
have happened while he was taking a shower or playing video
games on the couch. Instead, it happened at the start of a race.
That’s how these things work. It’s sad and it’s scary, but at the end of the day, it was a heart defect no one knew he had. You
couldn’t have controlled what happened next.”
“Yeah, but—”
“His body wasn’t made of steel, Charlotte. Look, I’m not
trying to be insensitive here, but he had an irreparable brain
injury and internal bleeding. I may be in the medical field
now, but even a Joe Schmoe off the street would know that’s
a lot of trauma. So if you’re wondering, I’d say you made the
right choice, you made the only choice. And to be honest, I’m glad it fell on someone strong enough to make it. Hell, I don’t know if I could have done the same thing then.”
“Thanks. I hope you don’t feel like you have to just say
that though.”
It’s not that I think Brian is appeasing me so that I don’t start to cry or get too emotional while we have a hundred-mile
car ride back to the city on our hands. I just want to be sure
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he’s not walking on eggshells unnecessarily. Plenty of people
have told me over the years that I did the right thing simply
because they thought voicing any alternate opinion would
upset me. The thing is, I was already upset.
He pivots his body toward me and sets down the olive oil
this-or-that.
“You asked me a loaded question and now I gave you a
loaded answer. We both know the chance that Decker would
have ended up like the guy you saw at the bar was less than
1 percent. Have you forgotten what Dr. Brandt told you that
day?”
How could I ever?
“Take it from me, Dr. Josef R. Brandt is one of the best
trauma doctors in the country,” he continues on. “I’ve read a
million of his medical journals and seen him speak dozens of
times. I don’t think he was bluffing when he gave you those
recovery odds.”
Brian moves his arm to around my shoulder and pulls me in
for a hug. I can feel his fingers swirl through the kink in my
hair left from last night’s rubber band. Then I swear, though
I can’t be sure, he sweetly kisses the top of my head.
“Stop spiraling, Char. Listen. I know I haven’t been there
to remind you over these last five years, but no part of what
happened to him is your fault. It was just a bad accident. That’s all it was. Decker was a healthy guy. There’s no reason for this to have happened to him. You had nothing to do with it. You
were just the only one brave enough to do the right thing with
him in the end, and that’s the bottom line.”
I didn’t intend to get emotional because of his answer. I
just wanted his friendly medical opinion. But the times that
I’m ever physically in the proximity of people who have my
back and support my decision 100 percent are so few and far
between that my eyes well up a bit. I wipe at them before a
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full-blown tear can transpire and trickle down my cheek, but
I think Brian’s already on to me. And so, just like I’m sure he does with his youngest patients before jabbing them in the
arm with a shot, he goes into distraction mode to help me
feel better.
“Hey, let’s check this booth out,” he says, grabbing my
hand and pulling me toward a face painting station. “I want
to do it.”
“Really? Don’t you think we’re a little old for this?”
“Maybe. But I also think the kids I see tonight during
rounds would absolutely love it if their doctor has a face
painted like a leopard. How much is it?” he asks the vendor.
“Ten dollars a face.”
“Sold.” He hands the vendor a crisp twenty. “I’ll take the
leopard, please.”
“One for your girlfriend, too?” the vendor asks.
“Oh, no, I’m not his—”
“Sure, she’ll take one, too. Pick out an animal, Char. Go
on.”
Brian plops down in a chair and closes his eyes before I can
protest this ridiculousness. I’m a grown woman with grown
woman problems to solve.
“What’ll it be?” the artist asks.
Fuck it. The proceeds go to wildfire prevention, right?
“I’ll take a panda,” I say as an artist gets to work on my zoo
animal makeover.
“Oh yeah, my kids are going to love this,” Brian says, look-
ing at his progress in a hand mirror.
“How did you get into pediatrics anyway?” I ask as his face
painter continues drawing black spots all over his cheeks. “I
thought you were on track for…something else.”
“Well, hello there, Diane Sawyer. Let’s see, I guess I just
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get kind of redundant, you know? It’s either a nose job or a
boob job on any given day.”
I wasn’t going to say.
“And I wanted to be challenged more than that. What’s
more challenging than a little kid who isn’t feeling well and
can’t describe what’s the matter? So I fast-tracked my school-
ing in that direction.”
“So the last four and a half years or so for you have been…”
“Until I landed residency at Cedars? School, school, and
more school—with a side of bartending, Dumpster diving for
copper wire, and the occasional selling my blood, plasma, and
bone marrow stints.”
“Selling your bone marrow?”
“Yeah, you never know when you’re going to need a little
extra cash.”
The face painters scold us for talking too much. All of our
facial movements are smudging the little details they’re trying to get right. As we quiet down, I think about what Brian just
said. I thought his parents paid for his school, car, and condo, so what was he doing scrounging for money?
Regardless of his finances, I had no idea that he threw him-
self into the field like this. Forget about not having time to
party or go out with girls, it doesn’t even sound like he’s had time for himself. Is that e
ven healthy? Why is he so averse to
slowing down at all? Probably for the same reasons I am…
life is a little scary when you have to sit one on one with it
for any length of time.
A girl—more specifically, a cute girl with an even cuter
blunt bob that I could never pull off—enters the tent and com-
mends Brian on his bold choice.
“Hi, my friends and I saw you from across the street and I
just wanted to say…leopard looks good on you.”
“Ha, thanks,” he says with a smirk. “I know it’s silly but I
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work with kids in a hospital; my patients will get a kick out
of it later.”
I don’t get it. How can he still be this cool with animal print goop all over his face?
“Oh, so you’re a doctor? I’m Alexis,” she says, extends a
hand.
“Ready, Bri?” I say. “I know you have to get to work and
I just I realized I left my keys at your place.” I toss that last part in as a little extra ammo. How threatened can Blondie
be by a girl wearing a panda mask if don’t say something that
makes her wonder if maybe I spent the night at Brian’s place?
And who cares if she does think that? I’m being protective,
not jealous. I don’t want him getting trapped by some gold
digger chick wearing a flower crown.
“Enjoy the market, Alexis,” he says, pulling out a few sin-
gles to tip the face painters. “Let’s head back. Think you left something else of yours at my place, too,” he says to me with
a smile.
I know he’s talking about the urn, but the inflection in his
voice matched mine and so I breathe a little easier knowing
we were on the same page just now.
I’m drinking a Diet Coke and putting away the rest of my
laundry from earlier when a knock at my door tells me I have
a delivery: the matzo from my mom has arrived—and for what
it’s worth, so has my hard drive. Upon opening the matzo
package, with no help from Casey’s switchblade this time, I
immediately help myself to a big, crackly square and slather
on chunky peanut butter I found on Casey’s side of the pantry.
Two bites in and I’m transported to my favorite Brooklyn
bodega, Hadleigh’s, where I imagine putting box after box
in a red grocery store basket before checking out with the
friendly cashier named Eli. The simple treat tastes like home.