"You smell," said the kid.
Thanks, kid.
My phone woke me from sleep. I hadn't even realized I had fallen asleep, but somehow the exhaustion had overtaken me. I had filled out the multitude of forms, handed them in, and then paced around the waiting room asking the nurses for an update every few minutes until they told me to sit down or get out. I only knew that he was in the ICU and that I couldn't see him. They wouldn't answer the question of whether he was stable or not. So I had begrudgingly sat down, and without the constant movement, I guess I had dozed off. I was pissed I had fallen asleep, but somehow knew I needed the rest. Through the windows I could see it was dark now. I don't know what time I came in - maybe late afternoon?
My phone listed a bunch of texts, but the incoming call that was making all the noise was from Carly.
"Hello?" I said. My voice was still a little hoarse from shouting.
"So you told me I should give you a call some time so we can talk... I guess this became some time." Her voice was amused, flirty, and a little drunk.
And then I remembered the email I wrote her. I had wanted to decide whether I wanted to send it or not when we were coming back up. But I didn't think about that with Szandor's injury. So when I got back to the surface, the email had been automatically sent. As far as she knew, I sent her an email about getting back together and relationship stuff just a few hours ago. She had no idea about the hell of the last few hours.
"I..." I started, and then floundered. "I wrote that email last night, it got sent later. I... " I took a long pause before I blurted it out. "Szandor is in the hospital."
"What?" she said in shock.
"I'm here in the ER," I said. "He's been in there for hours, but they won't give me a good update..."
"Where are you?"
"South Avalon General," I said. "I've -"
"I'll be right there," she said.
"You don't have to -" I started, but she had already hung up.
I shrugged and looked at the text messages. They were from Meat, Delilah, and Paulie looking for some update. I didn't have it in me to answer them and put my phone back in my pocket. I just sat back in my seat. I looked over at the ER sign in desk and locked glances with the nurse on duty. It was the same one who had been there earlier. She gave me a look that said she'd give me an update when she had one and otherwise I should sit my ass back down.
I don't know how long it was, but when Carly came through those doors, it was like a shining light. She wasn't dressed up or anything, in fact she was in sweatpants. She probably ran right out when she had hung up the phone. But she was still beautiful to me, more so in this moment when I was hurting.
I stood and she ran right up to me, wrapping her arms around me. "Oh, Mikkel, I'm so, so sorry!"
For a moment I was stiff. For a moment I held back, trying to be strong, trying so hard not to be weak, trying so hard to hold onto some cautious part of myself and not let go when there was still so much unsaid and undone between her and I. For a moment, I managed it. And then that moment was gone and I melted into her arms. My whole body slackened and the tension I had been carrying fell away. For this moment, I got to be me, just me, not the monster hunter, not the tough guy, not the Big Brother. And that meant I cried.
Carly held me tight, whispering, "It's going to be okay."
"I'm so worried," I blubbered into her hair.
"It's going to be okay," she whispered, though I'm not sure if she even believed herself. She stroked my hair trying to be soothing.
I felt like a kid again, but not in the best way. I felt powerless and alone, like when our dad left. I was old enough to remember him and what it was like when he left, how it made Mom feel. She told me what I could do was be a good big brother to Szandor, who would never remember our dad. She gave me that job, Big Brother, a title I had hung on to for a long time. When Mom died, it was even more important that I be Big Brother. When we got into dangerous work, I worried about my brother's safety, but Szandor and I did it together. I could still be Big Brother, I could still look out for him.
But today I didn't look out for him. I was separated from him and then I got to watch as that creature slammed him against the walls. And I could do nothing. Nothing. I had failed as a Big Brother.
You know how when you're already feeling down, your heart figures out some new way to kick you, to force you down even lower, trying to get you to wallow in the deepest darkest parts of you, where you're the most broken? There was that too. The heart is an asshole.
If Szandor died... then I'd be alone. That would be my last relative gone. My dad was technically still alive, but he didn't count. He wasn't family, not after running out on us. My brother was my only family. If he died, I'd be alone.
And I'd no longer be Big Brother. I'm not sure if I can convey what a loss that would be. So much of my life was tied up in being Big Brother, of being there for my Szandor, of being that for Mom's sake, of supporting my family. If Szandor died, I'd not only be alone, but that whole role of Big Brother would slip away. I'd be alone and have no sense of who I was anymore.
I wasn't ready for that.
I wasn't ready for my brother to die.
I wish I could have kept those thoughts away while Carly held me, but I couldn't. That wasn't an option. The best that could happen was that she held me until the volume of those thoughts subsided. She held me until I at least stopped crying. Then she broke the embrace and only held my hand as we sat down.
"You really smell, by the way," she said.
An eternity later and they still had no update for me. The waiting was the most frustrating part of the experience. I needed to know if he was okay or not, but all I had was frustration. Every moment had me expecting the worst because they didn't tell me. Having Carly with me helped not freak out, but the endless tick of minutes slowly sucked away any solace she was giving.
I went outside to smoke a cigarette. For some reason, the nurses were adamant I couldn't smoke inside. I went and sat on the curb outside, in plain view of the ER in case they finally had information. Carly stood at the ER doors, her arms wrapped around herself, keeping a respectful distance so she wouldn't have to inhale the smoke.
Wasting time while smoking a cigarette is kind of an art. Some would call it even magic, as it can summon a bus or train you've been waiting for - often sooner than the end of the cigarette. Even without an impending mass transit vehicle, it's slow, meditative, and pensive. You spend a long time staring at your cigarette and the tongue of smoke that slowly rises from it. You act as though this is loftier than just looking out the window or staring at your shoes, as if you're 50% cooler because what you're staring at is a cigarette and not the husband and wife yelling at each other half a block down. It also works well in bars when you're trying to pick up girls.
Still, what I needed at that time was meditative distraction, not extra Cool Guy Points, so I was staring at the smoke as if it would take all my thoughts away. I breathed out and then watched the smoke swirling up from my cigarette. Past the smoke was someone walking toward the ER. For the most part I didn't care about the other people in the ER, but without even intending I found my eyes shift up to him. He happened to look at me as well. Our eyes locked in sudden recognition.
"It's you!" he said in fear, anger, and shock.
It took me a second to realize where I knew him from, then my face hardened as well. It was Frat Boy Chad. He wasn't wearing his hat and his clothes were different, but he still wore an Avalon U shirt and cargo shorts. His forehead was bleeding and there was some fresh blood on his lip. He had a black eye, but that didn't look new. With some pride, I realized I probably had given him that. The other wounds had happened this night, probably from Chad picking fights again.
I wanted to say something melodramatic that Chad deserved, like, "Up to your tricks again, you old villain?" But that was not my mental state. Instead I stood up slowly. I tossed my cigarette on the pavement and then slowly twisted my boot on it to put
it out.
"You got a problem, Chad?"
"Yeah, you fucking east side scumbag!" he replied. "Fucking cheater! Couldn't even wait until we were outside? Couldn't fight like a man?"
"Says the guy who had his friends outside waiting to jump his poor victim."
"Only if I needed them," he said, but I was sure it was a lie by how nervously he said it. "But you are nothing without your friends. Where are they, huh? Or do we need to watch that bar and follow them one at a time to kick their asses?" He looked over to the ER. "Or did someone already do the job for us?"
This was too much. You don't joke about my brother being in the hospital when he's already in the hospital. I moved without thinking. It was far faster than Chad had expected.
"Mikkel!"
It was Carly's call as she had run toward us. That was the only thing that stopped me. I had a handful of Chad's shirt and my fist was in the air, on the way to bludgeon Chad's face beyond recognition when Carly's voice caught me and froze me. Chad's face was full of fear, despite any tough guy front he had wanted to put on.
I let go of Chad's shirt and used that hand to push him away from me. He stumbled but didn't fall.
"Go," I said icily. "Find some other hospital. I don't want to see you. Ever."
Whatever Chad's former bluster, he knew when to cut his losses. He ran.
Carly came over to me. "Are you alright?"
I hung my head in shame. "I just... I just almost..."
"It's okay," she said.
"That's not who you want me to be. You must be so angry with me..."
"I'm not."
"But I would have kicked his ass in front of a hospital... all because he said something... unknowingly about my brother."
"It's not your fault, it's grief."
"It's not my fault? Of course it's my fault. This is all my fault. Everybody knows it."
"Nobody's blaming you. Nobody's saying anything like that. I don't think this is your fault."
I turned to her, sadness in my eyes. "Why not?"
Not long after our short interlude outside, there was news. The nurse asked me to follow her. Carly followed behind us as the nurse took me through some long corridors to a patient room. I didn't think this was the ICU, so I took that as a good sign. It was a double room, two beds with just a curtain for privacy. The bed nearest the door had most of the curtain around it, but I could tell from a quick look it was some unconscious burn victim that I later learned had been in a long term coma. My brother was in the other bed.
A doctor in scrubs awaited me by my brother's bed holding his clipboard. I figured the doctor must be doing his residency, since he appeared barely older than me. His manner wasn't warm, it was tired and quick. He had to tell me a bunch of info and he honestly didn't care how I took it. He wasn't mean, he was just detached. To be fair to him, by the circles around his eyes and the way his body seemed to be held up due to willpower, I think he had been on shift a very, very long time and just wanted to go home.
He didn't bother to introduce himself, he just talked about my brother. Szandor was stable. That was the good news. He wasn't getting any worse. His wounds were mostly superficial. They had treated his lacerations and his cuts. But there was also bad news.
He was in a coma.
The doctor must have known the gravity of that statement, because after he said that, he said nothing else and practically stepped back to give me breathing room.
"A coma?" I said.
"Your brother suffered a concussion," said the doctor. "Luckily there was no internal bleeding, which can really complicate things. But it was a severe blow to his head and neck. The trauma of the blow is what caused it, even if there is no specific damage we can address. We've got him stable. But he's comatose and there's nothing we can do to wake him up."
"When will he wake up?"
"That's the thing," said the doctor. "We don't know. Maybe right now. Maybe in an hour. Maybe never."
"So.... what then?" I said. "What can you do?"
"We can keep him alive and comfortable," said the doctor. "But at this point, we don't know when or if he's going to wake up. Medically there's really not anything we can go and do. I wish I had more to tell you, but that's really it."
"Do I need to like, talk to him and shit? To help him wake up?" I asked.
"You can if you like," said the doctor.
"But will it help?" I asked.
The doctor shrugged. "Probably not. But some people like doing it. They think it will do something. Like the movies or something, right?"
The doctor looked at me for a moment, wondering if I had more questions. When I just stared dumbfounded at my brother's unconscious body, the doctor just nodded.
"Well, take the time you need," he said as he put my brother's clipboard on the front of the bed and left the room. "The nurse can answer any further questions you have."
"I'm so sorry, Mikkel," said Carly.
"I feel like I'm in the worst soap opera ever," I said.
"Then maybe he'll wake up when his long-lost identical cousin shows up to get the family inheritance," said Carly. I looked back at her and she cringed nervously under my gaze. "Sorry, bad time to try to lighten the mood with absurd humor."
I grabbed a chair from near the burned man's bed and sat down next to Szandor. Carly stayed back by the door, giving me my privacy. Szandor was hooked up to machines monitoring his condition and a few to keep him alive while unconscious. His expression was calm. It was weird not seeing him tense or sour; it was almost like seeing someone else. I stared at him for a minute. It felt weird that I was just staring at him, even if he was unconscious. I figured I should say something. I lightly grabbed his arm.
"I don't know if you can hear me, brother. I'm... I'm sorry. I... I fucked up. I said I'd always have your back... but when it came down to it, I wasn't able to. I could only watch you get thrown around by that creature. I should have been there. I should have done something. I'm sorry."
In a perfect world, my brother would have heard my words and woken up. After my admission of guilt, all would be forgiven and my brother would have woken in a cloud of like, I don't know, fucking fairy dust. And then he would have gotten up, danced a jig, we'd receive the Publisher's Clearing House check, and then we'd freeze frame for the ending credits. End of the story. However, as much as I love movies, life is rarely anything like them. We have to live after the credits roll. We have to be in all those moments in between scenes. We have to live the pain, get along without the dramatic music, and see the times in between the montage. We have to live when our brother is in a hospital bed and we can't do anything.
Well, there was something I could do. If our situations were reversed, I knew what Szandor would be doing. He would be doing his best to shove his foot up Jabberwock Jack's ass any way he could. It wouldn't wake me up, but it would make him feel better and serve his own sense of justice. Alternately, he would be settling things with Jericho over this whole mission. My brother has always been scrappier than me, but right now, all those things seemed much better than sitting here at his bedside, ineffectual and waiting for him to wake, a moment which might never arrive.
"Once in a lifetime opportunity, right?" I said, my voice weak, my eyes wet from tears I wouldn't let myself shed in front of him.
I looked at the clock. 12:02. It had just passed to midnight on a new day. Szandor's twenty-first birthday.
I reached into my coat and pulled out the large ziploc bag which contained his birthday present. I had brought it with me into the Undersystem, just in case his birthday came while we were still underground. I opened the bag and pulled out the present. It was a smallish frame made of Avalon Brass. The shimmer was etched with fancy designs, all leading down to an inscription under the picture. The frame was small because the picture was small. In it were Szandor and I. He was a freshman in high school, I was a junior. It had been School Picture Day and before Szandor had started dyeing his hair or had any piercings. He had a gawky smi
le on his face. I had just started growing out my hair, so I had a shaggy mullet and a grin. Behind us was our mother, her arms over our shoulders, proud as anyone could ever be. On the frame below the picture was inscribed FAMILY.
I put the frame on the bedside table, turning it to face Szandor's unconscious form.
"Happy birthday, brother."
I left the room, passing Carly without a word. A dark sense of purpose had come over me. I knew what I had to do. I knew what my brother would want me to do.
"Where are you going?" she said, catching up to me in the hall.
"I'm going to see Jericho," I said.
"Him?" she said. "Don't you see he's the whole problem? From everything you told me, he's a classic Captain Ahab. He's obsessed with killing Jabberwock Jack. He suffered a great loss and then has spent the entire rest of his life trying to avenge that wrong. But Jack's not a person. Jack's an animal. That's the whole point of Moby Dick! You can't take revenge on animals!"
"I just need to do something. What Szandor would want me to do."
"No offense, Mikkel, but your brother's kind of an idiot. He's not a wise man."
"You've never liked him," I said, closing my eyes and sighing as I resurrected an old argument like magic. An uncomfortable, unintentional magic.
"I do like him!" she said. "But he's going to get you both killed!"
"He's my brother and I need to have his back!"
"Are you going to have his back when he walks into certain doom? Would you have had his back on this and ended up in the hospital too? Would I have been here sitting on the side of your bed?"
There was an icy silence. We both realized what happened. She had just resurrected something far bigger.
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