“It would be better if you don’t touch him,” they say.
I nod and sit back, buckling the seat belt in the jump seat they pointed me toward.
My hands are shaking and I don’t know what to do with myself. They start IV’s and look into his eyes and do a lot of things I don’t understand.
He doesn’t wake up. I worry that he never will.
Paul gets to the hospital first, and he’s carrying Hayley on his hip. She’s frantic, and she wants to know why they can’t finish their date. I hold out my hands and she comes to me, settling against my chest. “What happened?” Paul asked.
“He just fell down in the hallway and started to shake,” I try to explain. But I’m trying to be strong since I’m holding Hayley.
“Can we see him?” he asks.
I shake my head. “Not yet. They took him back and they’re working on him.”
Paul goes to the payphone and drops in some change. He turns his back to me and talks for a minute. Then he comes and takes Hayley back from my arms. “Now we wait,” he says.
Hayley pats his cheek, and I see tears well up in his eyes. “Where’s Matt?” Hayley asks.
“Matt’s with the doctors,” he explains, blinking hard.
“Dey gonna make him all betta?” she asks. She’s following his gaze with hers, not letting him off the hook. She frowns when he doesn’t answer.
“They’re going to work hard to make him better,” I tell her.
“Thank you,” Paul chokes out. I nod. I can’t say more than that. Hayley holds out her arms to me again, and I take her to sit down. We read upside down books until a woman comes rushing through the doors. She runs to Paul. Her hair is up in a ponytail and she’s almost as tall as he is. But she’s stunning. Hayley has Paul’s hair color and eyes, but everything else about her is her mother.
She leans into Paul to her and he hugs her tightly. I hear them murmuring to one another but I can’t hear what they’re saying. She comes to me and takes Hayley in her arms. “Thank you,” she says.
I look into her eyes. She’s kind. I can tell. And I can also see that she’s head over heels in love with Paul. She walks over to him, whispers something in his ear, and he nods. She kisses him on the lips, and he kisses her back. “I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on,” he says.
She leaves with Hayley. Paul takes a deep breath and sits down beside me, his elbows on his knees. “He wasn’t in a lot of pain, was he?” he asks.
“Not that I could tell.” He was convulsing. But not in pain. I doubt he was feeling much.
“That’s my biggest fear. That he’ll be in a lot of pain when it happens. It scares me to death.”
“So you’ve thought about it,” I blurt out. I want to take it back immediately. But it’s too late.
“Thought about it.” He snorts. “It’s all I ever f**king think about. Ever.” His voice cracks on the last word. “I’m his big brother. I’m supposed to be able to save him from anything that could hurt him. But I can’t save him from this.”
I just listen, because there’s nothing I can say to comfort him.
A tear drop rolls down his cheek and he brushes it away with a hurried swipe. “He knows how much you care,” I say. It’s probably the wrong thing to tell him.
“The fucker better know how I feel about him. I’d die for every last one of them. I wish it was me instead of him. I’d trade places with him in a heartbeat.”
“He wouldn’t let you.” It’s the truth.
Paul chuckles. But it’s a sound without any merriment.
The doors of the hospital slide open and Logan, Pete and Sam run in. I hop out of my chair fall into Logan’s arms, because I know he’ll catch me. He squeezes me to him and rubs my hair for a second. Paul walks over and starts to speak to him. They’re all signing, but I can follow it. He explains.
Can we see him? Logan asks.
Paul shakes his head. “Not yet. They’ll let us know when we can.”
If we can. But no one says that out loud.
Logan drops his arm around me and pulls me into him. His face is in my hair and I can feel the warm caress of his breath against my neck. I lift my head and look up at him. “It’s bad,” I say.
He closes his eyes and lays the tips of his fingers against his temple. He knows.
Now we wait.
They’re all draped over the furniture in the waiting room, taking up a ton of space. But no one else is there, so it hasn’t mattered. Any one of these boys would give their seat up for someone else. Pete took Sam’s socks about an hour ago, and Sam put his shoes back on with none. Pete was barefoot. I somehow knew he wouldn’t go back inside. He went for his brothers instead.
It seems like days later when a doctor comes to talk to the family. It could have been minutes. It could have been hours. It feels like days.
The doctor sighs heavily and starts to talk. I hear snippets of it over the pulse that’s pounding in my head.
The chemo didn’t work.
He’s worse than he was.
They can call hospice.
“There’s nothing else you can do?” Paul asks.
The doctor sits down with them. “We’ve exhausted every opportunity. There are some trials that he could get into, but the chances are small. And the one that would most benefit him is very expensive.”
He waits. A pregnant silence falls over the room. “How expensive?” Paul asks.
“Hundreds of thousands,” the doctor says. “He doesn’t even have medical insurance.”
So that’s it. They don’t have hundreds of thousands of dollars so their brother dies.
I wipe a tear from my cheek. “This treatment, it could save him?” I ask. “Or would it just prolong the inevitable?”
He looks at me like I’m the most ridiculous person he’s ever met. “They’re having good success with it. There are no guarantees, however.”
“But it would give him a chance?”
“The best he could have.”
I nod. Logan squeezes me to him. I’ll be right back, I sign to him. I know what I have to do. My heart is breaking in two. But I know what my choices are.
Where are you going? he asks.
Restroom. I’ll be right back.
You ok?
I nod. He watches me walk away, his gaze boring into my back. I can feel it all the way down the hall. I don’t stop at the bathroom, though. I keep walking until I find a payphone.
I pick up the handle and a weird sort of peace settles over me. I press the button for the operator. “Collect call to California, please,” I say. I rattle off the number. It’s Saturday afternoon. My dad will be in the office.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
“Mr. Madison’s office,” a chipper voice says.
“You have a collect call from – caller, state your name?” the operator says.
“I’d like to talk with Mr. Madison, please,” I reply.
“We’ll accept the charges.” There’s a stillness on the other end of the line. “Emily, is that you?” the voice says. There’s hope in her voice. She’s been my dad’s secretary for as long as I can remember.
“Can I talk with him, please?” I ask.
The line goes dead for a moment, and then my dad picks up. “Emily?” he asks. I can almost hear the beat of his heart through the phone in the stillness.
“Dad,” I say.
“Em,” he says on a long sigh, like he’s deflating. There’s a clank and I imagine him taking his glasses off his nose and laying them on the table. “Where are you?”
“I need some help, Dad,” I say. I lay my forehead against the cool tiles on the wall and try not to cry. I want to cry for all that I’m giving up. I want to cry for all that I’m giving them. But mostly, I want to cry for me.
“Anything, Emily,” he says. His breath catches. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
“No, I’m fine. But I’m coming home.”
“Tell me where you are. I’ll send the jet.” His voice is urgent.
“Dad, first, I need for you to do something for me.” Please, please, please do this for me.
He doesn’t say anything for a minute. “What do you need, Emily?”
“I need for you to take care of something for me, Dad.” I tell him some of the story. “I need for you to get him in the trial. And I want to take care of his treatment. We’ll use my money, Dad.” I have enough to spare. And then some. A lot more than I need.
He chuckles. “We don’t need to touch your trust fund, Em,” he says. “Why does this young man matter to you?” he asks.
“He just does, Dad.”
I hear his pen click. “What’s his name?”
“Matthew Reed.” My voice clogs in my throat. He’s going to do it. He’s going to do it. I tell him the name of the hospital. “I don’t know more information than that. I don’t even know who his doctor is.”
He chuckles. “I can get the information I need.”
“You’re going to do it, right, Dad?” I ask.
“Emily,” he sighs. “If I do this, you’re coming home.”
My voice is a whisper. “Yes, Dad. I understand.”
“I’m sending the jet for you now.”
“I need a day, Dad. I need for you to handle this now. And I need another day. If you’ll give me that much time, I’ll come home and I’ll do whatever you want.” I’m pleading with him now.
He waits. And I hear his pen click over and over. “Ok,” he breathes. “I’m sending the jet now. It’ll be waiting when you’re ready at the airport.”
“Take care of this for me, Dad.” I roll my forehead back and forth across the tiles. “Please. Promise me.”
“I’d do anything for you, Em,” he reminds me.
“I’ll see you in a couple of days,” I whisper.
“Two days, Em,” he says. “No longer.” And before the line goes dead, I hear him yelling details to his secretary. I hear Matt’s name. And I hear him tell her to handle it. It’ll get done. I’m sure of it.
I walk back to the waiting room. The doctor is gone and all the boys are standing there with their arms around one another. “What happened?” I ask.
They move away from one another. “They’re moving him to a room. He’s awake. We can go see him in just a minute,” Paul explains.
I drop into a chair. My legs will no longer support me.
A few minutes later, a nurse summons the boys to follow her. Logan takes my hand and tugs me along with them. “I’m not family,” I say.
“Shut up,” he murmurs. He brushes a strand of hair back that’s stuck to my lip.
I let him tow me along.
“You can only stay for a few minutes,” the nurse warns.
The boys are giddy with excitement. She pushes back a curtain and Matt’s there in the bed. There are tubes and wires and he’s hooked up to monitors. “What’s up, guys?” he asks. He winces and adjusts himself in the bed.
“The next time you want to die, don’t do it on Kit’s watch, you sorry fucker,” Logan says out loud. The room goes quiet. A tear rolls down Logan’s cheek and Matt reaches out a hand for him. Logan grabs it, palm to palm, their thumbs wrapped together like men do, and falls into his chest. Sam and Pete put their arms around one another and Paul is just standing there, so I lean into his side. He throws an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him.
Matt finally lets Logan go and says, “Shit, when did you learn to talk?”
Logan shrugs.
“This girl is teaching him all sorts of new shit,” Paul says, squeezing me tightly.
“What happened?” Logan asks. He’s signing while he talks out loud.
“I had a date to snuggle with your girl on the couch and we were going to watch a movie,” Matt says. “Next thing I know, she has my head in her lap, instead.” He looks over at me, an impish twinkle in his eye. “If you wanted to hold me, Kit, you could have just asked.” He chuckles.
“You remember?” I ask.
He grins this unrepentant grin. “I’ll never, ever forget the day you threw Logan over to hold me in your arms.”
Logan chuckles. Out loud. Everyone looks at him and he shrugs.
“You going to keep talking, bro?” Paul asks cautiously.
Logan shrugs again.
Paul squeezes me.
Suddenly, a team of doctors rushes into the room. “What’s wrong?” Paul barks.
The doctor comes in a moment later. “We’re going to be moving Matt to a different facility,” he explains. “So he can begin that treatment we discussed.”
“What?” Matt’s dumbfounded. As are the rest of them.
The doctor holds up his hands to silence them. “Don’t get too hopeful,” he says. “But now there’s a chance where there wasn’t one before.”
“There’s a chance he might live?” Paul asks.
The doctor smiles and claps Paul on the shoulder. “A small one, yes.”
“How?”
“I’m still working all that out.” The doctor looks at me, but I break eye contact.
The room is barraged with activity, and the nurses get ready to move Matt. “There’s a helicopter waiting,” the nurse explains.
“How?” Paul asks again.
Matt reaches for each of them in turn. He hugs his brothers. Then he hugs me to him last. “Take care of them,” he says. “No matter what.”