Coming Home(146)

His eyes were drawn to Amanda on other side of the bed as she reached up and clicked a switch on the machine above Bryan’s head.

The drip. The thing that kept his blood pumping through his body.

Gone.

Something like panic fluttered in his chest, making it hard to breathe, and his eyes flew to Gram; she was sitting in the chair on the opposite side of the bed, smiling softly as she stroked her hand up and down Bryan’s arm.

He thought he’d made his peace with this. He’d known for a year now that Bryan wasn’t coming back. She was the one who had hoped. She was the one who had believed, against all odds, that one morning he would open his eyes. Danny had always known it was a pipe dream. He’d said his good-byes long before this.

So then why was this so hard?

Gram looked so calm—peaceful, even—and he felt like he was about to lose it. Like he wanted to pound his fists against the nearest object and scream until his throat was raw and bloody and his body collapsed in on itself.

The doctor slid a chair up to Bryan’s bedside opposite Gram, nodding at Danny before he walked to the other side of the room to consult with the nurse.

Danny walked the few steps over to the chair and sank down into it, pressing his hands into the tops of his thighs to try and stop them from trembling.

He stared at Bryan’s face, trying to make him appear. Trying to animate it. Trying to remember his mannerisms. His facial expressions. His laugh.

When Danny wasn’t with him, it was always so hard to do. He could conjure images, but the details were hazy, like looking at a picture on the bottom of a pool.

But with Bryan in front of him, everything was suddenly sharp. His impassive face provided the blank canvas for Danny to recreate image after image of his friend—happy, sad, confused, angry, amused—all crystal clear and perfect. Whenever he’d leave after a visit, Danny would always promise himself that this time, he wouldn’t forget. He’d replay the images in his mind like a slideshow as he drove home, trying to commit their clarity to permanent memory. But it was like trying to hold water in his fist.

He failed every time.

Bryan’s face was thinner than Danny’s memories, something he’d gradually grown accustomed to, but today his jaw was covered in a light five-o’clock shadow. Gram and the nurses had spent the last year keeping up a steady system of shaving him, cutting his hair, his fingernails.

Preserving him.

But no one had shaved him today.

Dr. Racine approached Gram’s side of the bed, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It won’t be too much longer now,” he said gently.

Danny straightened as his stomach jolted, sending bile up into the back of his throat.

No. NO.

His heart started racing, urging him to do something. Ask them to perform CPR. Beg them to hook the tube back up. Plead with them to restart the drip.

Don’t. Don’t go yet. Not yet.

His eyes darted to the monitor above the bed; the nurse had silenced it before she turned the drip off, but he could see the long green line, adorned with miniature spikes—tiny hills that crested with every beat of his heart.

Getting further and further apart.

“Come on, Bry. Fight,” he choked out, dropping his head so that his forehead rested on Bryan’s arm.

And then he heard her voice.

Gram was singing to him in her soft, ethereal way—the familiar words he’d heard hundreds of times in his life, whenever he or Bryan was restless, or hurt, or sick.

Or drifting off to sleep.

He’s my treasure, he’s my joy