by Edie Bryant
I was hoping this would be a good update; she did sound pretty chipper about it.
“Fantastic, thank you,” I told her as I grabbed my guest pass. I looked down at Jake. “Come on, bud.”
We went to his father’s room and my heart sank as soon as I saw him. Laying in that bed… looking lifeless. Fuck, this was not the brother I knew.
Jake had the exact opposite reaction, though. As soon as he saw Sam, he went sprinting to his bedside with his little pumpkin in his arms.
I’d convinced him to keep Rita in the car because I was sure he couldn’t carry both things around the hospital without dropping one. To my surprise, he begrudgingly agreed. I knew it was only because he would be seeing his father. Why did he need Rita to remind him of Sam if he could actually see him?
“Daddy, Daddy, look what I made for you!” he said eagerly as he put the pumpkin on Sam’s bedside table. “I put purple elephants all over it, Daddy. Look, these bigger elephants are the daddy elephants and the little ones are the baby elephants.”
I hadn’t realized until right now that he’d drawn father and child elephants. Learning this felt like a shot to the chest.
“Hey, bro,” I said as I sat in the chair next to his bedside, though I knew he couldn’t hear me.
I let Jake talk to him for a while. He told Sam every little detail about his week with great enthusiasm, not bothered by the fact that he wasn’t answering.
Sam hadn’t been like this the whole time he was in the hospital. At first, he had experienced a lot of trauma, of course, and was heavily sedated, so while he couldn’t talk, he wasn’t unresponsive in this way.
And for a week or so, it looked like he was getting better. He couldn’t talk to us much, as it was labor to breathe after the damage that had been done to his lungs, but he was able to smile and nod and be present. In that state, I tried to bring Jake to the hospital every day to see him. In that state, I loved seeing him myself.
But things took a turn for the worse a week ago. I didn’t understand the mechanics of it much (I probably could have if I tried harder to understand, but I pushed it from my mind) but basically, the doctors thought it best to put Sam in a medically induced coma. Which was why he couldn’t even speak to us now…
And I didn’t know if he ever would.
The doctor came in, a smile on his face. “Hey there, Jake, did you color that pumpkin?”
“I painted it!” Jake said eagerly. “I painted it like Daddy would paint it.”
“Well, how sweet is that!” the doctor cooed at him.
I liked Doctor Rushmore. He was always very sweet to Jake and he had a comforting way about him. He really seemed to know what he was doing, which I appreciated, because he had my brother’s life in his hands.
“Lila, may I speak to you outside?” he asked me.
“Sure,” I agreed, my heart pounding. “We’ll be right back, bud,” I told Jake.
But he was hardly paying attention to me. He was back to telling his father all about his week.
Doctor Rushmore shut the door behind him but I could still see Jake through the window.
“I’ve got some good news.” He smiled. “We’re taking Sam out of the coma this weekend.”
“You are?” I asked excitedly. “And you think he’ll be able to come out of it okay?”
“That, we’re not so sure about. I can’t make any promises. I will say that Sam does have brain activity but it will be impossible to see the extent of the damage until he wakes. And we don’t know if he will wake right away, we don’t even know if it will happen at all, but my hopes are high. He’s a fighter, your brother.”
“Yeah, he is,” I said with mixed emotions. I was both excited to hear he had a fighting chance and overwhelmed with the possibility that this was the end of the road for him.
“If he shows any sign of waking, I will call you right away.”
“So you don’t think we should be here when you take him off the drugs?”
Doctor Rushmore looked over at Jake through the window. “No, I don’t think we should put Jake through that. I don’t want him to get his hopes up. I also don’t want him to see his father wake up and be unable to really interact with him. I think it will be best if you two come after we can assess the damage. He will still be on a lot of pain killers and medications so don’t worry, I doubt he’d notice even if you two were here.”
I nodded. “Okay then. So we’ll wait for your call.”
Doctor Rushmore patted my shoulder. “Hang in there, Lila.”
“Doing my best.” I smiled weakly at him as I walked back into the room.
Jake was still talking, this time going on and on about the pumpkin patch.
“It’s a pretty place I think you would like, Daddy,” he told Sam. “I know you like when the leaves are changing red and orange and the whole place looks red and orange!” Then Jake looked really serious and turned to me.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Do you think he still likes trees?”
“Your father? Absolutely, why don’t you think he’d like trees?”
“Well, because that tree broke him,” he answered.
God, talking to him about this just broke my heart.
“But it wasn’t the tree’s fault, Jake. The tree was stuck there, it couldn’t move. Your Dad understands that, and he doesn’t blame the tree.”
He nodded, but didn’t look satisfied. “So it was the rain’s fault? Or the car’s fault?”
I sighed. “Like we talked about before, Jake, it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
But this was hard to explain to a six-year-old. He saw the world in black and white. When something went wrong, he thought there was someone or something bad to have caused it.
But there was nobody and nothing to blame, not even Sam. He was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. It was the first rain of the season, the oil had risen up on the freeway, and he hydroplaned. Nobody could have foreseen it, and nothing he could do would have prevented it, except maybe not going into work that day.
But that simply was never an option for Sam. Even when he wasn’t feeling well, he went to work. Even if Jake wasn’t feeling well, I’d come over and take care of him while Sam worked.
He had to make ends meet. There was no child support coming from Jake’s deadbeat mom. There was only Sam to support the both of them, and money was always a little tight, though it was enough to get by if he got all of his hours.
I always tried to offer money, but that was the one way he would never allow me to help. Sam was too prideful.
“Do you want to go get some lunch, Jake? Your dad needs to rest.”
“No!” he said immediately. “He rests all day! He just sits here and rests! He’s happy to see me.”
I took a deep breath. “You’re right.” I smiled. “We can stay here a little while longer, but then we’ve got to go.”
He nodded and gave his father a quick kiss on the hand.
He really was right, he did just sit here and rest. There was no reason we needed to leave right now, we were in no rush. I just hated being here.
I had my fingers crossed that this would be the last visit like this. Maybe next time, he’d be awake. Maybe he’d be able to nod and squeeze our hands and I’d feel like my brother was actually around… Maybe.
God, I missed Sam so much.
We stayed another half an hour. I enticed Jake into leaving by saying we’d get ice cream after lunch, but that only barely worked. I gave Sam a kiss on the forehead before we left, but it felt hollow. Everything felt hollow. Even my excitement about tonight couldn’t drown this feeling out.
But hopefully, actually being with Pia could. Maybe she’d be able to distract me… I hoped, at least. I didn’t want to feel like this any longer.
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
C
hapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
FREE Pumpkin Patch Excerpt
11. Pia
12. Lila
13. Pia
14. Lila
