Jill and I discussed our plans to take my visiting parents and sister to every tourist spot in The City: the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point, the Embarcadero and Fisherman’s Wharf, Lombard Street and Coit Tower, even Alcatraz if the weather stayed warm enough. We plotted as much of our course by cable car as possible, a special request from my mum. She imagined jumping aboard the moving cable car like she had once done on the old Routemasters back in London when she was a girl. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t permitted. She’d find out soon enough.
With everything mapped out, Jill and I were gathering to leave when my mobile phone vibrated against my leg. I pulled it from my pocket and scanned the display. UNKNOWN CALLER, it read. I wouldn’t normally have taken the call, but my folks were flying in from Melbourne. Although Nick had texted me when he had everyone and their luggage loaded into his car, when it concerned my brother, I’d come to expect problems along the way.
“Tyler Karras,” I answered, hoping to hear a client’s frantic plea instead of Nick’s, but it was an unfamiliar voice that addressed me.
“Mr. Karras, my name is Joanne Weaver. I’m the patient liaison at San Francisco General Hospital. We have your brother, Nicholas, in the emergency room. He requested we pull your name and number from his cell phone.”
My heart skipped a beat. “What happened? Is he all right?”
“I’m afraid he’s been in an accident. I see this is a local number. Are you in the area, by any chance? Could you get down here anytime soon?”
“An accident? What do you mean? In his car?”
I glanced up at Jillian. Her worried eyes scanned mine for an explanation.
“I’d prefer to speak with you in person, if you don’t mind. Just come on down to the emergency room entrance and give the triage nurse your name. I’ll see you when you get here.”
“Whoa, wait a minute! What about my parents and sister? They okay?”
A silent pause followed. “In person, Mr. Karras. We’ll talk about everything when you get here. I’ll see you then.” And the line clicked dead.
Alarmed, Jill and I flagged down a taxi and raced to the hospital, only to find out from a nurse at the triage desk that Nick was in the middle of emergency surgery. We were ushered by elevator to the surgical unit six floors up and escorted into a small room where we endured a tortuous wait with endless pacing, interrupted only once for an update by another nurse. Three other families came and went in the time we spent staring blindly at the muted TV mounted high in the corner. Instead of reading the tattered, months-old magazines, I rolled one up and then another, drumming each impatiently along the outside of my thighs. Jillian balanced on the edge of a well-worn vinyl chair. Her eyes swept back and forth as I paced in front of her. After several hours, a woman dressed in business attire and a doctor in scrubs finally entered the stuffy room. Jill jumped to my side, her hand on my arm.
“Mr. Karras?” she asked, and I nodded in return. “Hi, I’m Joanne. We spoke earlier. I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to see you. We had several emergencies come in all at once.” She gestured to the doctor beside her. “This is Dr. Manetti.”
Jill and I shook both their hands. “My fiancée, Jillian,” I said with a nod in her direction. “So what’s going on with Nick? We’ve been waiting forever, but nobody’s told us anything. And I can’t find my parents or my sister.”
“There was a car accident on the 101. Apparently, your brother fell asleep at the wheel. His blood-alcohol level was elevated, though within legal limits. Luckily, he was wearing his seatbelt,” the doctor said, “at least that’s what the bruising indicates. He sustained a moderate concussion and several broken bones, including a compound fracture in his right tibia,” he explained with a touch to his lower leg. “An orthopedic surgeon is repairing it as we speak using small plates and screws. But at this point, we’re more concerned about the injury to his spinal cord. Though Nick has responded to pain stimuli, there’s still considerable swelling, and he’s experiencing some partial paralysis.”
I closed my eyes and turned away, a heaviness weighing in the pit of my stomach.
“Right now, nothing appears to be life threatening, but we’ll need to keep a close eye on him, especially his liver for a seatbelt injury. Only time will tell. And he may need a considerable amount of it for recovery,” the doctor added. “He should be taken into the recovery room soon. Once he’s set, you can visit, but only for a short time. All right?”
“Okay but…what about their parents and sister?” Jill asked. “They were all in the car together. Are they all being treated here? We haven’t heard anything.”
I turned back for the answer, worried yet hopeful.
The doctor motioned toward his colleague. “Joanne will help you with that. I’m only on Nick’s case right now. I should get back into surgery. It was nice meeting you both.” He gave us a tight smile and stepped out of the room.
The woman moved forward with a sorrowful expression. “Yes, your parents, well, um… I’m very sorry, but the police reported two older victims—late fifties perhaps—both of whom died before the first responders even arrived on scene. I can certainly check for you, but it’s likely the coroner has already moved their bodies to the county morgue. You’ll need to go down there anyway, to make a positive ID, so…”
I just stood there and stared, as if that would somehow make it all clearer. “And my sister, Kim?” I asked.
“Yes, she’s here. She survived the crash and maintained a heart rhythm for a short period of time, but…her injuries are rather extensive. Your sister sustained a life-threatening head injury. She’s had a CAT scan, as well as an MRI, both of which show considerable damage. I’m afraid Kim is currently on full life-support.”
Joanne took a step closer, her eyes full of concern.
“Now, I can take you up to see her,” she continued, “but…you should be prepared. Her doctors have declared Kim brain dead, meaning there is no activity at all. Again, I’m very sorry, but…there doesn’t appear to be any hope for recovery. And um...well… There’s just no easy way to say this.” She paused and looked me in the eye. “You’ll need to decide how long you wish her to remain on life-support.”
I stared at her open-mouthed, my heart skipping beneath my chest.
Joanne reached forward and gently grasped my forearm. “While I realize this is all very…difficult for you, I’ve been asked to discuss possible organ donation. Whenever you’re ready, of course.”
Too stunned to respond, I yanked my arm away. I couldn’t allow my head to go there yet. It was too much for me to process all at once.
After asking to see my sister, I was escorted to her side in the ICU. I barely recognized her, though it was less about the changes she’d undergone since I last saw her three years ago when she was only twelve. Kim’s face, her entire head it seemed, had ballooned. She barely looked human let alone like my baby sister. Her features were swollen, stretched, and exaggerated; the skin rippled like citrus fruit, and colored to a deep purplish-black. And her hair was still bloodied and matted against her skull. I wondered why they hadn’t yet bothered to clean her up.
I forced myself to breathe as I reached down and lifted Kim’s hand. Her skin was warm, her veins bulging blue beneath the translucent skin. I cupped her hand to my face and whispered as I stroked the inside of her wrist with my thumb, urging her to open her eyes and turn toward my voice. But she didn’t. She couldn’t hear me. She couldn’t feel me. And she never would again. Her brain was dead, and no amount of medicine or surgery would ever reverse that. It was hopeless. But I didn’t have it in me to pull the plug. Not yet. I just sat there, rocking back and forth, crying as a mélange of guilt, shame, and despair washed over me like a storm cloud entombing a mountain.
For the next eight days, I shuttled like a zombie between Nick’s bedside and Kim’s. After several combative consultations, Kim’s doctor finally persuaded me to terminate her life-support. I sobbed as the hiss of the machine—
the last tangible sign of her life—fell silent, and Kim’s body stilled. I’d never again hear her chatter of boys and school dances, of her plans to follow me and Nick to the States. Her dreams, like her life, disintegrated, like fog in the warm afternoon sun.
Afterwards, I existed in a foggy limbo. My parents and sister were gone. Their deaths devastated me, but with Nick so gravely injured, I had little time to mourn them properly. The guilt and shame, however, dogged me every minute of the day, like hounds nipping at my heels. If I had only listened to Nick and given in to his request, they would all still be alive, and I wouldn’t be pacing at his bedside, worried he might never walk again.
Nick’s injuries proved difficult to recover from, and he spent the next few months in rehabilitation. Jill took time away from her photography studio, and I practically shut the doors on my contracting business so we could work closely with Nick’s physical therapists. It was our mission to help him regain his strength and mobility, which he ultimately did with great effort. But the pain was a constant torment, and the guilt he carried over the deaths of our parents and sister made his recovery even more difficult.
I don’t know which of those contributed more, but within four months, Nick was addicted to his pain meds then later to booze. I found it difficult to accept that Nick would want to live that way. He was the epitome of life itself, always living on the edge, one adventure after another. That he would accept a life mired in addiction—chained to something over which he had no control—confused and angered me. I urged him to clean himself up. I even put him in drug rehab, but it didn’t stick. Over the next six months, his addictions took priority. All I could do was watch as Nick drifted further and further away.
Jillian tried to help. She and Nick had enjoyed a playful relationship before the accident, flirtatious even, but afterwards, he ignored her. We rarely heard from him at all, and then only when he was in trouble. He couldn’t keep a job, and he was even caught stealing a couple of times, which landed him in jail, but somehow he always managed to skate on the charges.
To fuel his habits, Nick attempted an armed robbery close to his home at a liquor store in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond District, an area notoriously controlled by the Solntsevskaya Bratva, a highly-organized crime family originally from Moscow, now firmly rooted in San Francisco’s Little Russia. They knew my brother well and didn’t take kindly to him robbing a store under their costly protection, especially with the owner screaming for Nick’s blood. My brother realized they were mere hours away from taking justice into their own hands. Panicked and frightened, he called me and confessed his careless error in judgment.
“Careless?” I said, taken aback. “For God’s sake, Nick, are you insane or just dumb?”
“I know it was stupid, Ty. I don’t need you driving it into the ground like you always do. But I do need your help. I need a place to stay until I can smooth things over with those Russian pricks. I can’t go back to my flat now. They’ll come looking for me there.”
“Yeah? And what happens when they come looking for you at our place? You’d put Jill at risk to save your own neck?”
“No way, Ty. They don’t even know about you—or Jill—so they sure as hell don’t know where you live. It’ll only be for a few days, I swear. Please, brother, I wouldn’t ask but I don’t know what to do. I have nowhere else to go.”
Though I resented always being put in the position of bailing Nick out of trouble, I relented and gave him one week to clear up his mess, but one week turned into two, then three and four. A few days ago, he assured me he was close to a resolution, but in the end, he let his habits get in the way, and when he ventured out to replenish my depleted bar and score some OxyContin, he was attacked, beaten, and left for dead on the sidewalk, with me unconscious beside him. And here I was again, back in the hospital at Nick’s bedside, fixated on the monotonous rhythm of another bloody machine, grateful that he had made it through one more night.
I bounced back into the moment when the door to Nick’s room swung wide. The ping of the elevator and drone of TVs rushed in, along with Nick’s doctor, a tall man in his early forties dressed in green scrubs and blue Crocs. A harried nurse’s aide followed. She rattled off notes from Nick’s chart then handed it to the doctor. After checking his IV, she took his vital signs and turned back to the doctor who mumbled instructions, rapid-fire. With a nod, she left in a flash of faded pink cotton. The doctor walked over to my side, his eyes glued to the chart. I remained seated in the chair with my elbows leaning along the edge of Nick’s bed.
“Your brother took quite a beating,” he said without looking at me, “but he’ll recover. His injuries aren’t nearly as serious as the last time he was admitted.”
He paused and scribbled notes then signed his name in a grand flourish before returning the chart to its proper place. He slipped the pen into his pocket and looked at me for the first time since entering. I wondered what he thought of my two black eyes and freshly aligned nose.
“No need for rehab this time. He should be up on his own within a few days and out of here in a week. His nurse will be back soon with his new meds. She’ll call if there’s any change, but I think Nick will be just fine. He was very lucky this time. Any questions?”
I shook my head and held out my hand. “No, Doctor. Thank you.”
“Sure thing.” He shook with a firm grip and headed for the door.
After he left, I settled back down and focused on the monitor’s measured pattern. Nearly an hour later, Nick’s nurse returned with his meds and asked Jill and me to leave. I placed Nick’s hand back at his side then stepped away, the steady chime of the monitor fading into silence behind me.
Chapter Three
Tyler
Five times I watched the dense summer fog march in and retreat outside the hospital window, five long days of prayers and pacing before Nick was moved out of the ICU. At last he was conscious. The swelling around his eyes had eased, and he could finally see me hovering about his bedside. He was in good spirits, alert and talkative, though he hardly wanted to hear what I had to say once the staff left us alone. I’d waited long enough. There was no easing into it.
“I’m glad you’re feeling better, Nick, but…that was pretty stupid, leaving the house like that. I don’t understand. Why would you do that? I let you stay with us to keep you safe, and you leave to score drugs? What were you thinking?”
He glared hard at me then looked away, his eyes lost in the bags of bruised, swollen flesh that still hung around them. “Bugger off, Ty. I don’t need your shit. I’ve suffered enough as it is.”
I bobbed my head. “Right. And what about those Russian blokes? Will they agree? Or are they going to come back and finish what they started? And what about us? Did you even consider Jill…or me, for that matter?”
He turned his palms to the ceiling. “What was I supposed to do, Ty? I need those pills. I can’t get through the day without them.”
“That’s bullshit. You’ve never even tried. It’s just easier for you to rely on those pills and the booze than to man-up and face what’s happened.”
“Oh yeah, right, like you would know. You’ve never been messed up like I’ve been. If you had only listened to me in the first place, I wouldn’t be here, and they wouldn’t all be dead. It wasn’t all me, Ty. Admit it. You played your part. You need to accept your share of the blame, too.”
His words were like a slap in the face, because the truth of it rang so loudly in my ears. And the fact that I had always known yet never admitted that truth made it all the more difficult to accept now. But although Nick’s words had been a long time coming, I was still stunned by his outright accusation. With a guilty conscience binding my tongue, I threw him an angry glare and headed for the door, but his voice pursued me, halting my escape.
“No you don’t, Tyler! You can’t run away from me. We need to talk about this, once and for all. Work it all out.”
I stomped back over to face him, my anger defying the rem
orse I felt. “And just how do we do that, Nick? You disregard everything I say, and do whatever the hell you want, damn the consequences.”
“Oh, yeah? Well, what about you, huh? You refuse to bend, even just a little. Everything always has to be your way, the right way, the only way.” He shook his head. “I have to live my own life, Ty. Make my own mistakes. Why won’t you just let me—”
“Look what your mistakes have cost us, Nick!”
“Because you wouldn’t listen to me! You never do! I tried to tell you, but you didn’t hear!” He drummed his ear with his finger. “I admit my part in all this. I was wrong, yeah, stupid and foolish. I get that, I do, but…what about you, Tyler? You had a hand in this, too. You know you did.”
He looked at me as if daring me to refute, but I could not, because Nick was right. I never bothered to listen, not really. I always assumed I knew better, that simply being older, having more experience, somehow made me wiser. I tried to force Nick to live up to my expectations, by my rules. He warned me when he didn’t think he could. Yet I ignored him. I couldn’t even look him in the eye now. He held quiet while I wrestled silently with both my pride and my conscience. Finally, I sighed and nodded in acceptance for my role. It was about time.
“You’re right. I am at fault. I do shoulder some of the blame. And I’m sorry I never let you see that. I never held you solely accountable, Nick. Never. Truth is, that accident was more my fault than yours.”
He shook his and started to protest, but I held up my hand.
“No, just listen. I need you to hear this. All of it.” I settled into the plastic chair with my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands. “You haven’t said anything I haven’t thought of a thousand times myself. Yes, I could have helped you out. Yes, I should have realized you weren’t in the best shape to drive. You were a kid, and you liked to party. I knew that. I should have backed down. I’m sorry I didn’t. More than you know.”
The Mistaken Page 2