22
DALTON
When Dad comes to find me, I’m laying brick with my headphones on, blasting The Killers way too loud. He tugs out one ear pod and I notice how empty of color his usual ruddy face is. “Kain’s hurt. He’s in the hospital. I need you to drive me. I can’t…”
We both look down at his hands, and the trembling of his fingers makes my stomach drop.
I drop my tool to the ground and wipe my hands on my trousers. “What happened?” Cold dread makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle.
“His heart stopped, Dalton. He died on the field. They had to revive him.”
“What?”
My dad stares at me, waiting for his words to register, too wrung out by worry to repeat them himself.
“Is he…?” I can’t say the words.
“He’s at the hospital. He’s in intensive care.”
“I don’t understand.” I realize I sound like a fucking idiot. If I was smaller than my dad, he’d probably clip me around the back of the head like he used to when I was a kid, but I’m seven inches taller than him and seventy pounds of muscle heavier.
“His heart stopped, Dalton. Just…drive us to the hospital. We need to get Blake on the way.”
His voice grinds with the same bleak tone he had when Mom was nearing the end of her life, like all his energy and hope are lost.
“Let’s go,” I say.
I drive like I’m trapped in a nightmare, the world around me existing like a model inside a snow globe. When Blake joins us, we barely talk, lost in a world of disbelief, the fragility of life a bitter taste in our mouths. In the thirty minutes it takes us to reach the hospital, Dad receives three phone calls from Coach, updating on slight changes to Kain’s health. “Thank you for being with him,” Dad says on the last call as we pull into the hospital’s vast parking lot.
“His fiancée is with him,” Coach says over the car’s speaker. “She’s the one giving me updates.”
“His fiancée?” Dad twists the phone from his ear to look at it, then presses it back to his ear.
“Yes. Gabriella.”
“Gabriella?”
My grip on the steering wheel tightens so much my knuckles turn the color of bone. Dad’s voice is high and confused and although I’m relieved that Gabriella’s with Kain, the fiancée-confusion isn’t ideal.
“Yes. Gabriella. Long blonde hair. You don’t know his fiancée?”
“Err…of course. Sorry, the line is bad,” Dad says. “We’re pulling into the parking lot. We’ll be there soon.”
“Okay.” Coach sounds relieved. Holding the fort for the parents of a seriously ill player must be stressful.
Dad hangs up the phone and turns to me and then to Blake in the back seat. “Why is Gabriella telling people she’s engaged to your brother?”
“To ride with him in the ambulance, probably.” Blake finds it easier to be economical with the truth than I do. It slides from his tongue like syrup and Dad seems to relax instantly, his focus back on the road.
“I didn’t know you and Gabriella were still friends,” he says, his voice rising at the end like a question. “You haven’t hung out in years and Travis isn’t around anymore.”
“We are.” Blake shifts in the back seat and our eyes meet in the rearview mirror.
Friends with benefits.
I wait for my brother to embellish, but he doesn’t. Sensible. Say nothing and the hole won’t be deeply dug if the truth ever does come out.
I find a spot in the parking lot and we pile out of the car, making our way to the hospital entrance.
The clinical smell hits me, cloying and foreign, the reality of why we are here smacking me in the face. “There’s a sign for the ICU”, Blake says, pointing. We follow the directions, finding a huge gathering of football players and cheerleaders waiting outside the entrance, faces grave. Among them, Coach’s gray hair and mustache stand out.
“Mr. Nowak,” he says, stepping forward to greet my dad.
“Any updates since we spoke?” Dad asks quickly, his eyes flicking to the door, impatient but dread-filled.
“Nothing since then,” Coach says. “I’m glad you’re here. Kain needs his family around him.”
“Of course.”
Dad doesn’t waste time with any more pleasantries. He presses the buzzer to the ICU and explains who we’re here for. We’re buzzed in immediately and met by a nurse in a crisp uniform. “Mr. Nowak. Kain is in a stable condition. I’ll get one of the doctors to explain what has happened and the treatment he’s receiving. In the meantime, you can see him but a maximum of two at his bedside.”
“Is Gabriella still with him?” I ask.
The nurse nods. “She won’t let go of his hand. She keeps telling him stories from the past. It’s so sweet that they’ve known each other since they were kids. That’s a real love story,” she says.
Dad clears his throat, but before he can say anything, I interject. “I’ll go in first, Dad. I’ll get Gabriella to come out and then you and Blake can go in.” He looks as though he wants to disagree but is conscious of the nurse standing in front of us.
“I’ll take you through,” she says.
I’m given a mask to wear and then I follow the nurse into the ICU ward. It’s noisier than I expect, with machines whirring and beeping constantly. I spot Gabriella first, her head bent over Kain’s body, her hand clutching his. My brother is barely recognizable, with so many tubes and wires surrounding his body. He’s a big, muscular man, but in the hospital bed he seems so diminished.
I’m not a man who cries very often. Even when things are bad, there’s always an internal wall that holds back any strong emotion from breaking the surface. But seeing my baby brother hooked up to machines that are monitoring his heart, knowing that his heart stopped today, is too much. My cheeks are wet and my throat burns, and I swallow reflexively, swiping at my face before anyone sees them.
“Gab,” I manage to rasp. Her head whips around and as soon as she sees me, she’s flying into my arms, weeping with racking sobs that are so strong, I have to hold her upright. “It’s okay,” I tell her. “Kain’s going to be fine.”
“We lost him,” she gasps. “He died, Dalton. I watched him die, and they brought him back.”
“Shit.” I smooth her hair back from her face and take her hand in mine. She doesn’t usually wear rings, but as I try to squeeze her hand reassuringly, my palm scratches on what feels like a big diamond. I raise her hand and find an engagement ring on her finger.
“It’s Ellie’s,” she says softly. “She gave it to me to make the fiancée story more realistic.”
A strange twisting feeling curls from my stomach into my chest and around my heart, but I push it aside because I need to focus on Kain. I release Gabriella and stumble towards Kain, staring down at his diminished form.
“He can hear you,” Gabriella says. “I know he can. Talk to him. Let him know you’re here.”
I take her seat, finding it warm beneath me. I rest my hand on Kain’s shoulder, words tumbling inside my skull like an eight ball, with nothing that makes any sense rising to the surface. What do you say to your unconscious brother in this situation? It’s not something I’m prepared for in any way.
“Kain. Bro. It’s Dalton. We’re all here now. We’re all here waiting for you to wake up. You’re fine, bro. They’re making you better, okay? They know what they’re doing. The whole team is here, and Coach. And Gabriella is here too. You’ve just got to focus on healing, Kain. Leave everything else to us.”
Gabriella rests her hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. I cover her fingers with my own and she bends to kiss the top of my head, sending a flood of reassurance through me. I miss those small moments of affection that Mom would give me when I was a kid. She always knew when I needed a little pat on the shoulder, a kiss on the cheek, or a warm, enveloping hug. Gab is the same. She senses pain in others and knows just what to do to make it even a tiny amount better.
“I’m going to go now,” I tell Kain, searching his face for a small flicker of his eyelids or movement of his lips. I see nothing. “Dad and Blake are outside, and they want to come in. I’ll see you soon, okay? We’re not going to leave you. We’ll be here night and day until you wake up.”
I rise quickly, feeling the burn of tears like there’s a prickly sea urchin wedged in the back of my throat. Gabriella takes my hand, and we walk out of the ICU, shock rendering us both silent.
In the hallway, Dad waits, his arms folded around his chest as though his heart is threatening to spill over the linoleum. A doctor in his mid-fifties approaches us with a file held loosely in his hand. “Mr. Nowak,” he says, and me, Dad, and Blake all answer yes. His mouth tugs at the corners, but his eyes seem apologetic, as though he’s bracing himself to tell us some bad news and already feels guilty about it.
“Can I talk to you about Kain’s condition?”
“Yes, of course,” Dad says.
The doctor clears his throat, looking down at the floor before he meets Dad’s eyes. “What’s happened to him is very rare. He suffered a cardiac arrest. We believe it was due to the high-impact blunt blow he received to his chest on the field. It’s incredibly rare but there’s a very small window within the heart’s beating cycle where, if it receives a shock, it stops beating, sending the heart into fibrillation. This is what we believe happened. His heart was restarted on the field. So far, since he’s been in the hospital, he hasn’t suffered another incident. That’s a good sign, but he’s not out of the water. When the heart is in fibrillation, it’s quivering and not pumping, so blood doesn’t reach the body’s organs, including the brain.”
“He could be brain damaged?” My dad sways on his feet and Blake grabs his arm.
“We won’t know until he regains consciousness. Right now, we’re keeping him sedated so his body can recover.”
“I want to see him,” Dad says.
I touch him on the shoulder. “Go now with Blake. I’ll wait with Gabriella.”
The mention of her name seems to jolt Dad from his bubble of panic. He finds her standing slightly behind me. “Gabriella?” he says.
“Yes, Mr. Nowak.”
“Thank you for staying with my son.”
Her arm jolts against me and when I look down at her, she burrows her face into my shoulder, overwhelmed by emotion.
“Come on, Dad,” Blake says, tugging him forward. “Let’s go.”
I watch my dad take small shuffling steps, led by Blake, as though he’s reluctant to face whatever Kain is going to look like, or maybe because the shock of today has aged him.
Turning, I pull Gabriella into my arms and try to soothe her with long sweeps of my hand over her back. She shakes against me. “He died, Dalton,” she whispers against my chest. “He died in front of me.”
“I know, Gab. I’m so sorry you had to see that.”
She shakes her head but doesn’t reply. We stand like this for a long time, two statues frozen in an embrace of fear for Kain; a brother I love.
And Gabriella?
Everything about her screams that she cares for Kain deeply, but is that just the remnants of our childhood friendship or more?
I take her hand again, touching the diamond ring on her finger.
Blake has marked her with a tattoo. She’s wearing Kain’s chain around her neck. I wish it was my ring on her finger.
Ours.
The word reverberates in my head and my heart. I feel the craving for it to be true deep within me.
Now is not the time for thoughts like this. It’s not the time to tell Gabriella how we all feel, but when Kain is well, and he will be well, we can’t leave the deal to continue.
She needs to know what we want. She needs to know we crave to build a life with her.
But until then, all we can do is wait.