It was beginning to do my head in.
If she wanted my attention, she fucking had it. This shit had to stop.
I put the tickets in my appointment book on my desk and began closing up for the night when my phone rang. It was Mom. She was in Maryland visiting with Chance.
“Hey, everything okay?”
Since Chance’s accident, there was always that concern in the back of my mind that she would ring me and tell me the worst news.
“Everything is fine. Chance is awake. They’ve brought him out of his coma. He’s still in and out of consciousness, but I was able to ask him if he’d like to see you and he said he did.”
“That’s fucking great news, Mom. I’ll get the next flight.” I opened my schedule again and looked at the following day’s bookings. I had two big jobs, but they were regulars and I had a feeling they wouldn’t mind rescheduling. “Tell him I’ll be there tomorrow or the next day.”
“Okay, son.” Her voice was husky. She sounded off. And I could only imagine how hard this was on her. “Caleb, you need to be prepared for how he looks. Remember it’s the early days. He looks bad but it’s still him. It’s still your brother.”
Mom’s words played on my mind as I rode home. No one really knew the extent of Chance’s injuries and how badly scarred he would be. From what Mom said, he was covered in bandages to help with the healing process and to protect from infection, but his main injuries were on his back and the back of his legs. Apparently, Chance had been lying on his belly when the bomb went off and ripped apart the building he was in.
When I got home, Honey was in the kitchen attempting to make beef stroganoff without a recipe, which was always going to end badly. Somehow she’d made the sauce turn a weird grey-green color. So after throwing the dinner disaster into the garbage and ordering pizza, we talked about my visit to Maryland to see my brother.
“Will you come with me?” I asked her.
“Do you think it’s a good idea? Wouldn’t he prefer it if you went by yourself?”
“No. The best thing we can do for him is to keep it as normal as possible. He’ll want to know what is happening at home. Plus, I really want you there.”
Her eyes softened and she reached for my hand. “Of course.”
We flew out the next day and the following evening we arrived at the military hospital where my brother was recuperating from his injuries.
We were escorted by a military nurse called Marc.
“He’s heavily sedated but he is out of his coma,” he said. “He can hear you, but he probably won’t respond. He hasn’t said anything yet. His airway was affected in the bomb blast.”
Before we went any further, I stopped Marc. “Is he going to be okay?”
“That depends on what you consider okay. If you mean, will he be like he was before the bomb blast, then no. Your brother has second and third-degree burns to a large proportion of his body, as well as internal injuries. He also watched his squad burn before his eyes. The person you knew is not the person he is now. You should be aware of that.”
I was grateful to have Honey with me because she calmed my tempest. Hearing those things about my brother cut me to the bone. Pain bit at my insides and rattled my nerves as I took a moment to prepare myself for what I was about to see. Honey slid her hand into mine, her fingers curling around my own as we stood outside my brother’s hospital room. But when I opened the door, not even she could prepare me for the sight of my brother lying on that hospital bed. With all those tubes coming out of him and those bandages covering his body. Agony tore through my chest like lightning.
As I approached the bed, Chance’s eyes opened behind the holes in the bandages covering his face. Yesterday they had started pulling him out of his sedation, but he wasn’t showing much response to any kind of prompts. Now recognition lifted the shadows in the blue eyes looking back at me.
“Well, fuck,” I said sitting down next to him.
In that moment, the next words out of my mouth seemed really important.
“You’re alive and I’m fucking grateful,” I said. I chose those words because they were so fucking true. I wasn’t going to sugarcoat this by telling him everything was going to be okay. Because it wouldn’t be. Not for a long while. “This is just going to take time. Do you understand me, brother?”
He blinked his blue eyes and it took everything I had in me not to let the emotion show on my face.