Breathe Again

by Bonnie R. Paulson

  Motioning to the man closest to me, I spoke discreetly. “Check on Ryan. Don’t make it obvious, but suggest he ride along with us in the van. He needs to be checked out as well. This can’t be good for his situation.” The man nodded and walked with concealed concern to his employer’s brother.

  I returned my attention to Brodan. The man I’d sent in search of materials stood beside me, lowering the collection next to my leg. I looked up at him, his weathered skin crinkled in concern around his mouth. “Can you help me? I need to splint his leg up, so more damage doesn’t happen on the trip to the hospital.”

  He nodded and did as I instructed, lifting Brodan’s leg above and below the break so I could place a makeshift splint underneath it. Resting it on the wood I’d shoved under his leg, the man waited for my next instructions. Brodan remained silent. He could have a head injury or worse with his lack of reaction to the pain.

  “We’ll use simple square knots but in sections. And keep the knots on the inside of his leg, facing up.” Together we slid the rope in and around the leg. In quick succession, we secured the wood to the leg, stabilizing it the best we could.

  A soft rumble pulled up behind us. My trusty van hadn’t given the man any problems. I stood and flung the back doors open. The large open back spread out before me. With care, four of the men picked Brodan up and placed him in the back while I stabilized his neck. He shrank the large confines with his size. Each time we jostled him the dark circle on his pants spread. The ride down the hill would be excruciating were he conscious, nonetheless his status had me worried.

  I considered driving and having one of his workers sit with him, but they weren’t trained in trauma care and I knew what to look for regarding vitals and shock appearance. The man who had driven the van closer to where Brodan had fallen stood beside me, watching his boss with concern.

  Extending my hand, I hurriedly introduced myself.

  He returned the favor, identifying himself as Jeff.

  “Jeff, would you mind driving the van to the hospital? I need to monitor him and the break.” I glanced in Ryan’s direction, not hiding my worry. “I think Ryan could stand to have some company as well.”

  Jeff followed my gaze and nodded in agreement, then returned to the driver’s seat.

  My heart pounded. I crawled into the back of the van, cramming myself between Brodan’s good leg and the metal side of the vehicle. Ryan, sitting on the seat farthest from the front, turned to face us. Pale, he watched his brother’s labored breathing.

  Jeff put the van in gear and we rumbled out of the clearing and down the hillside road.

  Over the growl of the van’s engine, I tried to reassure Ryan, and maybe myself a little bit as well. “He’s going to be fine, Ryan. I’m sure of it.”

  Ryan raised his gaze to me, the blue startling in clarity. “You can’t guarantee that, Mag. Can you?”

  He told me. He didn’t ask. And he was right, I couldn’t guarantee it. I couldn’t guarantee a damn thing. I shook my head. I looked down at Brodan’s face, its peaceful guise hiding the trauma his body was enduring. Thankfully, he’d lost consciousness. Under this protection, I grasped his hand, more for me than him. He wasn’t in danger of dying, but the risk was possible.

  Ryan didn’t notice anything. He maintained vigil on Brodan’s face. The concern etched in the tight lines around his lips and eyes begged for his brother to be okay. He didn’t care what my answer would be, one way or the other.

  “You’re right, Ryan.” I murmured. Placing a hand to my forehead, I glanced up and met his gaze. “I wish I could tell you. I wish I could say ‘Ryan, Brodan will be perfectly healthy in no time.’ I can’t. But I can tell you I’m doing everything in power to make sure he’ll make it to the hospital, where the doctors can do more for him.” I bit my lip, trying to console myself and him. “Would that help?

  His voice hollow, he couldn’t drag his attention from his brother when he answered, “I think it does.”

  I pushed my hair out of my face. The incident had taken it from the ponytail in chunks and the rubber band clung to the ends of my curls. I met his gaze.

  “I’m glad.” I swallowed and looked back to Brodan’s hand, unable to bear his softened features.

  “He’s always watching over me. We have to make sure he’s fine.” A pale outline circled his mouth. There were levels of shock and Ryan was pushing from one to the next.

  “Hold it together, Ryan. I need you to hang in there, okay?” I held his gaze.

  Come on, Brodan, we need you. I willed my energy into him. He protected so many, the workers, his brother, me. Who was there to protect him? The fact screamed at me, loud and clear, with Brodan supine and inert, I didn’t want to lose the chance to feel again, even it didn’t pan out into anything permanent. I’d already lost a man I didn’t really love—how was I going to survive losing the man I could love?

  “You know why Brodan is so good with me? He’s so patient. You should see him with kids—he really needs to be a dad.” He stared at his brother.

  I cleared my throat. The last thing Ryan should be doing was talk like his brother was dying. “Ryan, he has plenty of time for that. It’s just a broken leg.” But was it? I couldn’t be sure. Brodan’s lashes fluttered but stayed against his skin. I held my breath. He would make a great dad. A terrific dad. For just a moment a little boy with his thick hair and clear blue eyes rode on a horse behind his dad, arm in the air and exuberance widening his smile.

  The image fell under the wheels as the van raced toward the middle of town.

  With regard to Ryan’s cystic fibrosis, I’d avoided thinking far into his revelation to me. I didn’t know what it meant, dealing with the knowledge that your brother was destined to die a painful, young death. Brodan had given so much and I’d only set out to torture him for it. I understood his rejection, but the sting fell short of affecting me like it had. Honorable rejections were done from duty and love and not from misguided selfishness. The truth grabbed my heart that much more.

  And Ryan, poor Ryan. How terrible to want to plan a future but unwilling to hurt others because you knew your time was short. The men had each expressed selfless acts and I’d misjudged them. The cracks in my heart no longer stung. The brothers had brought me to life again, gave me a reason to laugh.

  Chapter Ten

  After what seemed like hours, we pulled in front of the emergency department. Before the van came to a complete stop, I popped the doors open and jumped out. An ER staff member darted out from the fishbowl security desk and asked me what I needed.

  “We need to get this man to the trauma room!” I yelled.

  Magically, a gurney appeared with medical assistants on either side. Without a lot of effort they moved Brodan to a backboard, stabilizing his neck. In moments they whisked his unconscious form from the van and toward the sliding toward leading into the trauma room.

  “Tell me what happened.” A physician’s assistant ran beside the gurney and pressed a stethoscope to Brodan’s neck and chest.

  “We have a severely displaced tib-fib break. A load of logs fell on him. He lost consciousness but his vitals are stable.” I turned back to the van and caught sight of Ryan’s growing pallor.

  An abandoned wheelchair sitting to one side of the port a cache was just what we needed. I grabbed its handles and wheeled it to where Ryan struggled to extricate himself from his seat belt.

  “Come on.” I unhooked the vintage restraint and noticed his hands shaking. His breath came in gasps and perspiration dotted his forehead.

  Assisting him to the chair, I waved to Jeff and he nodded, seeming to understand I’d be right back. “Ryan, are you okay?” I placed my hand on his shoulder and pushed him the few feet to Brodan’s room with the other.

  With an imperceptible nod, he too peered into the doorway his brother had vanished through.

  Protocol I knew well. Brodan would be moved to the examining table, his shirt and pants cut off. A cervical spine collar would be affixed to
maintain stability should he be jostled or suddenly gain consciousness and try to move. An IV would be placed and blood drawn for labs. X-rays would be taken.

  Judging by the time of day, I guessed the radiologic technologist would be Stan and I pushed Ryan a little faster. The man took great films but he used entirely too much radiation and too much force to make the pictures turn out right. Rather than adjust the tube or the film, he strained the already pained patient. Once, I witnessed him using the amount of power on a six-year-old girl that I would have used on a forty-year-old man.

  Thankfully, they had taken Brodan’s unconscious form into the recently remodeled trauma room. The positioning of the equipment and ergonomic usability of the hardware increased the speed and efficiency of the medical staff. Care was quick and patients tended to have a higher rate of success with regards to healing and recovery.

  I swung Ryan into the room and pulled the curtain taut.

  Just as I’d supposed, Stan stood next to the control panel of the radiograph machine, waiting for the order on which X-rays would be needed.

  Bustling around the sterile room, nurses and doctors created a controlled chaos, ants busy in their work. Brodan lay on the movable table, already transferred from the rolling bed. His chest was bared to the chill of the room with his cut shirt in shreds on the floor. A male CNA worked calmly, cutting up the jeans on his injured leg. The dark, wet material gave way easily to the sharp surgical scissors.

  The nurse practitioner motioned to Stan. I moved Ryan to a corner out of the way. Grabbing a lead apron hanging on a hook behind him, I covered his lap with it before hurrying to join Stan as he collected the orders from the nurse.

  Startled, Stan looked at me, his jaw slackened before regaining his composure. Turning from the nurse and heading to the panel, he asked with dismissive curtness, “What are you doing, Maggie? Aren’t you on leave?” He smirked. “Forced leave of absence?”

  “It doesn’t concern you, Stan. What does concern you, though, is that I’ll do the honors on this one.” I took the orders from his unsuspecting grasp before he figured out what was happening.

  His face reddened. “You can’t do that. Maggie, you know the rules. You can’t treat family.” He reached for the papers. “Besides, you’re on suspension. You can’t do them.”

  “Again, Stan, none of your business. Why don’t you call Jim and have him come tell me I can’t do it or you can sit here and watch and get paid for it. Either way, move. I’m doing these films.” My green eyes could look particularly evil if I glared hard enough. “He’s not family.” I grabbed a lead apron and pulled the anonymous markers from the leaded glass window above the X-ray panel.

  He wasn’t family, but he had my feelings wrapped around him in a confused jumble of loyalty and concern.

  I glanced at Ryan to make sure he hadn’t disappeared or passed out. After Brodan stabilized and his prognosis had been spelled out with more clarity, Ryan would be admitted. I’d do my best to make sure they shared a room. Ryan couldn’t handle many more trips to the hospital without a transplant. The stress would get to anyone.

  I whirled from the little cubby where the technologist stands to shoot the X-ray, fast and efficient in each task I jammed through. The stack of orders disappeared as I raced to beat the diagnosing doctor. I needed to be free of the machine to hear what would happen to Brodan, where he’d be admitted to.

  I focused on the job and ignored the horrific breaks of his lower leg. Part of me wanted to vomit, but I swallowed it back. The men in my life had a horrible habit of exposing me to blood and guts.

  Returning to stand beside Brodan, I searched his still form for the resemblances to Dean I’d noted at the start. But there were none to be found. Even unconscious he had more animation in his features, more life, than Dean ever did. Brodan, even when antagonistic, was concerned. An enemy doesn’t deliver napkins when you’re having a breakdown. Or kiss you when he says he just wants to be friends.

  I glanced to the corner Ryan sat in. His lids, half-mast, had sunken into his face underscored by deep dark circles. His skin paled and I could tell his breathing had sped up considerably. Between the two brothers I didn’t know who to be more concerned about.

  “Where’s he going now?” Throwing my question in the general direction of the physician’s assistant, I rushed to Ryan’s side. A nurse arrived at the same time and checked his pulse while I shook his shoulder to stimulate some kind of response.

  The PA standing in the corner updating his chart called out, “CT.”

  I nodded. A CT scan made sense. Computed tomography showed head trauma faster than MRI. Turning to deal with Ryan’s sudden situation, I offered a slight smile to the woman standing beside him.

  Unraveling her stethoscope, the nurse waved at another person in scrubs to come our way. “Are you family of his?”

  I nodded. The rules of association were ones I enforced strictly as well. “Can they be in a shared room? Ryan has cystic fibrosis and that’s his brother.” I nodded at each one in turn.

  The nurse looked in the directions I indicated. “I know who they are. They’re regulars.” She smiled in my direction while a transport bed appeared beside us. Faceless, the person behind its delivery had already disappeared.

  “Would you like to help me get him on the bed?”

  I copied her and cupped my hand under his arm. She counted and we lurched him higher on three. He moved easily. Until that moment, I hadn’t realized how slight he really was. We slid him from the chair to the bed with little difficulty. He didn’t stir.

  The nurse hooked oxygen on to him and started an IV. She consulted a chart and wrote orders.

  I turned to check on Brodan. A different person pushed Brodan out the door. I watched until the entire bed had disappeared from view.

  “Where’s Ryan going?” A deep breath should have calmed me but I let it out on a sigh. I hadn’t realized how much I didn’t miss my job until that moment.

  “He’s going up for a chest X-ray before they admit him to the second floor.”

  A chest X-ray. I can do those. I needed to feel useful, necessary. “I’ll follow you. I’m sure I can do his films for him.”

  She nodded.

  I patted Ryan’s hand, almost jumping out of my skin with the roar of Jim’s voice from behind me.

  “Like hell you will.”

  I spun around.

  “Jim.” I’d messed up. I knew it. Jim knew it. He’d come down, and judging by the rigidity in his stance, he’d make sure I knew it.

  The nurse and suddenly present transporter disengaged the brakes and pushed Ryan from the room.

  “Don’t ‘Jim’ me, Maggie. You’re on suspension and you come in here off-shift and demand that you perform the procedures? You’re not covered with liability because you’re not supposed to be here.” He paced into the room, shoving his hand on his hip then into his lab coat pocket. “How do I explain this to my bosses?” He stopped a few feet from me. “This is not a hobby, Maggie. You can’t do this.”

  I formed a half smile, humorless—almost sad. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been the best employee or friend for quite a while.” I teared up. Swallowing, I decided I had the strength to do what I wanted. I could. I would. “Jim, I quit. I don’t want to work here. Heck, I don’t want to work anywhere for a while. I need time to figure out what happened to the last twelve years of my life.”

  His mouth softened, revealing the age in his expression he’d worked so hard to hide. Exhaustion isn’t easily slid under the rug. “I have to tell you, I’m glad you are. I can’t deal with covering your butt anymore. Every time I turn around, you’re doing or saying something that I’m called on the carpet about. At first, they let it slide, I let it slide, but then it wasn’t because you were grieving, it’s because you refused to.”

  My former boss pierced me with his gaze. “You understand that, don’t you, Maggie? You haven’t faced your husband’s death.” He held up his hand and ticked off factual points. “You
never showed anger. You cried, sure, but not with any amount of understanding or healing. You didn’t attend the funeral. Worst of all, you never took a break. You were in here on your next shift.” He studied his hand, the fingers splayed, before turning his contemplation to me.

  Tears hustled against the duct openings, but I tightened up and refused to let them fall.

  “Maggie, you have to heal. I’m glad you’re quitting. It hurts me to see you stuck in a rut. You need to move forward.” He looked around the trauma room and gave meaning to my actions with his next words. “This is the first time you’ve actually seemed to care about anything. Maybe you’re healing now.” He held out his hand. “It’s been a pleasure, Mag. You’ve been like a niece to me.”

  I shook his hand and he left the room without a backward glance so quickly I had no chance to reply. He’d given me a ton to think about and I didn’t know if I could handle the full weight of it at the moment. No sleep and the stress of the day sped to catch me and bring me down.

  I returned to the hospital with a bag of items for each of us. It was nice…having people who needed me. I’d never expected to need them too.

  I quit my job. My job. The last thing that I had left, I threw away.

  A woman dressed in periwinkle blue checked a computer and directed me to the Stewart/Steele room on the second floor. As I closed in on the door, my shoulders sensed the end near and they burned a little hotter.

  Flinging open the door, I dumped the bags on the ground, forgetting the need for quiet. Usually I need to wake up the patients in the rooms. The end of that habit hadn’t quite taken hold.

  Brodan turned his face toward me from the window. Stubble shadowed his jaw in a more dramatic fashion under the fluorescent lights. His leg hung in a triangle sling from a bar above his bed, pins poking from the sides of the hard white cast.

  “Surgery?” I kicked the bags farther from the doorway before walking all the way into the room. I couldn’t look away from the still form on the other bed. Fear filled me and if I ignored his presence just a bit longer, the reality of his situation wouldn’t be serious. Cystic fibrosis had only been a word before now. He’d seemed tired, weak even, but not in real danger.