This was a story I wrote to get into Chapman University. The prompt was one location, 3 characters.
The small room was too sterile for me, and the children’s book I had been pretending to read for the last hour was beginning to feel heavy. Emergency rooms were always a strange place, and even though I was accustomed to them after so many years, they always made me uneasy. Almost all of them shared some common characteristics. For example, the one that I was sitting in was packed (just like all the others) and it seemed like no matter where I was, there was always someone who had chest pain. The wait was always much longer in this particular ER, so when my brother Jeff started his seizures at 12:30 a.m. I had hoped that they would pass quickly becoming a mere pause for concern and not the great interruption that I had known would land him here. I had faith in the doctors and nurses it wasn’t anything like that, I knew my brother would make it home by the morning, that the nurse would show up at the house, and I would leave for work, but more than anything, it was the wait. I knew I would be here for hours on end while my brother was poked and prodded through the usual routine.
The long wait gave me plenty of time to reflect and after the first hour and a quarter I started to get agitated. I couldn’t believe I was stuck here with him, while the rest of my family was probably resting peacefully in their own beds. Ever since Jeff had his accident, the responsibility for his care fell directly on me. A decision justified simply because I am the oldest and most established.
My parents were not able to take him in light of the fact that my father was mercifully absent, and thanks to the years of abuse my father had given her, my mother suffered severe nervous breakdowns. He was scared out of the state by a set of criminal charges for petty theft and assault with the intent to murder. He hadn’t been seen in seven years but my mother had been conditioned to be frightened and lessons like that are hard to unlearn.
The last that I heard he was in Alaska, but that was three years ago and to be totally honest I couldn't care less. I never wanted him to come back in a state of repentance, in fact if he did I would probably just knock him on his ass and leave it at that. He had never really cared about us so it was easy to divorce myself from the idea that he was my father. I read this thing in Newsweek in another ER a while ago, before we came to Twin Falls, that said if a kid sees his dad abuse his mother, he is more likely to become an abuser. I really didn’t believe that because that statistic is just saying, is that that usually happens. It does not mean that it for sure will happen.
My three sisters are all very kind and they love Jeff, but they went from their high school years to marriages and colleges leaving me and Jeff behind. My youngest brother, Chris, really never got a chance to know Jeff, so when he graduated last year, he went straight into the Marines and was going to be leaving in a few months for Iraq.
So here I was. Since I had him when my sisters and my brother came of age and went about this business of life, I guess they thought I should keep him. I did receive a payment from the state as compensation for the trouble but most of that went to the nurse and his medication. I was left with the unfortunate task of watching my once strong brother need assistance with the simplest tasks, like using a fork without hurting himself and understanding how to properly use a toilet. The brother, who had lifted me over his head and spun me around so that I would swing in the air like a giant sock full of pennies laughing with fear and delight, now needed me to carry him up the stairs.
It was his own fault to be honest. He was the one that took his car at 92 miles per hour into the brick wall of our local library. He was the one who chose not to wear his seatbelt. It was him who insisted on miraculously surviving even though his brain and his body were irreparably shattered. Reflecting on all this, I was having a hard time finding a target for my anger. While it bounced back and forth between my father, my brother or my siblings, I set the book down and began examining a stack of Time magazines. I was lucky that they were current, another particularity of this waiting room, and that’s when I overheard low whispering coming from the chairs behind me. Two women were discussing what would happen if the person for whom they were waiting were to pass. A macabre sense of curiosity came over me and I found myself leaning toward them trying to make out the specifics the best that I could.
Their father was taking an evening walk in spite of his declining health, when he fell down on the sidewalk clutching his chest. Before he lost consciousness he had told the paramedics to call his family, but he had forgotten his wallet and while the hospital staff was identifying him, his family lost precious time. His wife arrived at the hospital two hours later and she was hysterical, she called her two closest daughters and went to watch while the doctors tried to repair a heart that was very seriously damaged.
Here were two daughters, sisters that were maybe going to be facing the death of their father and as I was listening to them I became so interested that I forgot that I was angry. They talked about the end of last summer when he looked so strong at the lake, and would they be able to go see him before he passed, or what if he made it through, people survived heart attacks all the time. They talked about memories of how he used sing to them when they were little, how he loved to sing the Beatles and taught them to respect the world around them but love to live in it. When they were in college he would write them letters every week. When the first grandchild was born he cried, and hugged everyone in the hospital until they had to ask him to stop. In listening to them I found myself drawn into their world, and I wished more than anything that I could feel like that about someone, or maybe I realized, I wanted it the other way. Maybe I wanted someone in the world to need me the way that these women needed their father.
After a while a woman came out, accompanied by a doctor and before anyone spoke, I knew it was their mother. She looked like them both, but I felt like I could see their father in their faces as well. She was trying to look strong, but it was obvious that she was bringing bad news, and before she even said a word she began bawling. The two girls ran to her and in the middle of this crowded room they all broke down. They held each other and sobbed and said things that all grieving people say, about better places and the right times. The doctor said that they could all go in and see him before they took him downstairs, and I inexplicably felt like I wanted to go see him too, almost like I had the right to go see him.
It was not the first time that I witnessed a scene like this, but for the first time I was truly affected. Their emotions had been so painfully genuine that I felt like it was possible that any emotion I had ever had was melodrama and shallow by comparison. Again I found myself wanting that kind of adoration. The impact that he seemed to have had on his family was the exact same kind of impact I wanted to have on those around me.
I continued to sit for what must have been another two hours and during the wait I hoped that the three would come back out. That I would hear something more of their story, and that they would notice me and ask me if I would like to join their family. Maybe I could be their new father. I would sing Beatles songs and write them letters, and hug everyone in the hospital with joy when the grandkids were born. I never saw them again and at about three in the morning Jeff was finally wheeled out to me.
He was slumped sideways in his chair barely conscious, and it seemed like this seizure really knocked him out. The doctor said it was a bad one, and that he may be out of it for a while. That I should expect some incontinence and that they had installed a feeding tube so that I could feed him there, even if he couldn’t take solid foods. I had been through all of this before and I really just wanted to get him home where I could just sleep and he would be safe.
I told the doctor thank you and turned to walk out the door, when he called after me. “You know,” he said “he is really lucky to have a brother like you.”