My Brother's Keeper

Day 432 - The Recovery

“How can this possibly be real?”

My eyes welled with tears as my, significantly larger, little brother squeezed me like he would never let me go.

“I know I say it all the time, but I love ya with all my heart man. Thanks for…. just for being you.”

Dave had made it a habit of starting to hug the people that he cared about more intensely, and for longer than any reasonable person would expect. I loved that about him. For years I’d gone without giving anyone a real hug. A hug that lasted long enough for you to appreciate the pressure of the other person’s arms around your back. A hug where you felt like the other person wanted to hold you, like you really meant everything to them.

I’d become so disconnected from this kind of feeling that when Dave started to do it, I was almost relieved. It was like someone had made it okay to love people again, and to show them that by embracing them. Really embracing them.

But our hug on this day was different than any he and I had ever shared.

It was the first time we had hugged outside of a hospital in over a year.

It was the first time that I could see in his face, in his eyes, that he was confident, and ready to take on the world.

I don’t know how many thousands of times we had embraced before this day…. But this was the first time I felt like I had ever really hugged my brother.

Day 0 - The Accident

“Okay so I’ll see you in what? Two weeks for the Novo Amor show?”

“Ya I should be able to make it…. But you know how school is right now. If things are too mental I’ll message you and let you know.” — I always made excuses. I always made sure I had an ‘out.’

“Come on man. You can’t miss this. He never tours here.”

“I know, I know. I’m 99% sure I’m in. Something insane will have to happen to keep me from going with you….”

Dave stared at me with his ‘I’ve heard this all before’ look.

“Look, even if I can’t make it, you can still stay at my place. We’ll still get to visit even if I can’t make the show.”

“Ya. Alright. I just think you’ll regret it if you don’t come.”

“I know…”

I didn’t know. All I could fixate on was my routine, and the work that I would never let myself push aside.

Dave broke the silence with, “Alright. I love you. Call me on the weekend.”

I wasn’t going to…. but not because I didn’t want to. Or because I was thoughtless and forgot about him. I’m not a monster!

I wasn’t going to because Dave wasn’t going to be able to use a phone.

We gave each other a quick one-armed hug, and I sent him on his way.

23 minutes later, Dave’s car was hit by a transport truck.

The driver wasn’t negligent, or sleeping, or intoxicated. Dave wasn’t any of those things either. The driver was simply too close to the lights to stop when they turned yellow, and Dave had already started to turn, assuming that the oncoming traffic would stop.

Dave’s car was destroyed. The front of Dave’s skull had been shattered into oblivion.

An ambulance arrived on the scene about 7 minutes after the crash. Dave had been lying on the pavement, unconscious, bleeding out of his nose, mouth, and ears for the entirety of those 7 minutes.

The doctor in ‘Emerg’ at Coldwater Village hospital decided that the only way to save him would be to airlift him to the Neurosurgery Department at Spark City General. Coldwater’s staff didn’t have the expertise, or equipment to perform the surgery he needed. However, Dave was far from stable at this point, and the likelihood of him surviving the flight was basically zero.

I stared blankly at the floor of my kitchen as the gravity of the situation set in.

“Whereabouts do you live? You are listed as Dave’s first point of contact in an emergency. You’ll need to get to that hospital as soon as you can.”

The nurse’s voice was little more than a soft buzzing in the back of my head.

I was stuck in a dream, watching Dave walk out to his car over and over again. After that little, half-hearted hug.

Day 0.5 - The Surgery

After hanging up the phone, I scrambled upstairs and began filling a small, plaid duffel bag with some clothes, bathroom supplies, and little things I thought might be helpful. My laptop, some headphones, a few books…..

What was I thinking? Had I not registered that Dave was going to die? I mean, even if he didn’t, he’d likely be, well, a 'vegetable,' as some might phrase it.

Aside from that, Dave was over 6 feet tall, I was only 5’6. My clothes wouldn’t fit him. Screen time? Music? Reading? Probably not a great idea to overstimulate the traumatic brain injury survivor!

Thinking back now, I also recognize that I was running on auto-pilot. So, perhaps I did it because, subconsciously, I needed to believe Dave would need those things.

——————————

When I arrived at Spark City, I was directed to the neurosurgery department, and told that Dave was stable, or as stable as he could be.

Dr. Jeht, his surgeon, explained the situation;

“Alex, Dave is alive, and I am going to do everything I can to save him, but you need to know that just because he made it here, that does not mean he is going to survive this surgery.”

I swayed anxiously as he spoke to me. My duffel bag, filled with all of the things that would be useless to Dave, but would, ironically, keep me sane, bounced off my right leg as I did.

“Your brother has suffered severe trauma to his skull, and has lost a significant amount of blood. I will not know the extent of the damage until I begin the surgery and assess the situation. So, I cannot promise you that, even if he does survive the surgery, he will be the same person. The damage to his brain could be so severe that he could have significant memory loss, personality changes, or possibly be disabled for the rest of his life. I need you to be prepared for those outcomes.”

I nodded to him.

I couldn’t speak, because speaking would mean crying. So I nodded.

——————————

It was 7:09pm when Dr. Jeht left me.

It was 3:33am when he finally emerged to tell me Dave had survived.

I was told that they had to remove small pieces of his prefrontal cortex, and rebuild the front of his skull using titanium mesh and polymer plates. Dave was also going to be placed in the intensive care unit, and kept fully-sedated for the first 48 hours after the surgery. So I made my way to the ICU waiting area, carrying a duffel bag that I had unknowingly prepared for myself.

Useless for Dave, but perfect for me. Cosmic justice.

Day 1 - The First Hugs

I awoke several hours after the surgery had finished, uncomfortably balled up on three plastic, barely-padded hospital chairs, which I had fashioned into the worst sleeping apparatus of all time. My eyes opened to find a young girl staring at me from her own chair.

“Wow. What a terrible bed. He should have just slept on the ground!” is what I imagined she was thinking.

I agreed.

I spent the early hours of the morning calling family and friends, many of whom began showing up at the hospital by the afternoon. Each time someone new came, it seemed like their embrace was longer and more intense than the one before.

Mine were not. But they wouldn’t let me go.

I should have noticed and started to do it then, but I didn’t. I needed Dave to show me the way.

Day 10 - The Coma

The sedatives had been removed from Dave’s I.V. after a few days, but he hadn’t woken up. Dr. Jeht reminded me that this was one of the many possible outcomes of Dave’s injury, and that there was no guarantee he would ever wake up.

On day 10, which was day 7 of spending time with ‘Coma Dave,’ I began to talk to him. I remembered hearing that although people in comas may not be processing information on a conscious level, their subconscious still registers the sounds and voices they hear. I don’t know if I believed it would help bring him back, but that didn’t matter, I wanted to talk to him while I had the chance.

I kept him updated about our favourite sports. I complained to him about the quality of the movies I watched while visiting him. I endured questioning looks from nurses, doctors, and other visitors who happened by us while I read him either very academic, not-in-the-least-bit entertaining texts, or short stories about Winnie the Pooh. I occasionally even asked him questions, hoping that somehow, somewhere in there, he was at least contemplating them.

It was on day 10 that I came to accept he would probably never answer them.

Day 21 - The Awakening

On day 21, Dave opened his eyes. He was bewildered and lost, but, incredibly, he was still Dave.

“Aaaaaaaaleexxxxx…. Whhheeeerrrrreeeeee aaaaammmmm IIIIIIII?”

His words were a whisper.

They dragged out slowly, making him sound as though he’d suffered a stroke, which is how he would continue to sound for months. He still listened, understood and formulated answers just as quickly as he ever had inside of his head, but his body struggled to respond to the commands from his central nervous system. He spoke slowly, moved even slower, and had almost no ability to contract his muscles. Standing, walking, and even gripping small items was nearly impossible for him.

Still…. He was awake. And he knew who I was. So it seemed nothing was truly impossible.

Day 33 - The Pictures & The Memory Journal

By day 33, day 12 of his ‘return to the realm of the living,’ exactly which parts of his memory had been lost were becoming clearer. When I discovered he had no recollection of the 10-day trip up the Nahanni River that we had taken just a few years earlier, I decided we should team up to help each other recall important events, and write a memory journal about them.

He was not enthusiastic about this;

“How am I supposed to write in this journal? I can’t remember what to write! I can’t even hold the pen! It’s going to look like a kindergartener made it.”

I wouldn’t let him quit before trying. Brotherly love to the rescue;

“First off…. I don’t really give a sh*t what your writing looks like. Your crippled little hand there is going to grab this pen and scribble the best it can until it starts writing legible words. In fact, you’re going to learn to be ambidextrous and use both!”

“I don’t remember being able to write with both before…. I think I was left-handed. Why should I use both now?”

“Because you’re NOT who you were before! Your skull was too weak to protect you and your puny brain! Which, thankfully, was small enough that it was barely hit in the crash. So we are building a NEW you. A BETTER you. The brother I SHOULD have had.” I smirked at him as I finished. “And this brother will write with both hands better than I write with one!”

What he also didn’t know was that I had made a digital scrapbook of pictures from our trip. Watching his eyes light up as he saw himself, for essentially the very first time, paddling a canoe up the Nahanni, was a beautiful moment. A striking opposite to what I believe most of us experience.

Many of us sit around daydreaming about the things we hope to accomplish, or trying to convince ourselves that we ‘could do X’ if only we had the time (often with little evidence to support our story). On that day, I watched my brother discover that he HAD done something. He had achieved a lifelong dream without knowing he did it. Without even knowing it had been his dream!

Day 33 was a great day.

Day 90 - The Bathroom

By day 90, Dave had been doing physiotherapy for well over a month. He had lost so much weight and muscle since the accident that he still couldn’t get himself into, or out of his bed, but he was able to walk short distances using a walker once he was standing. Both his arm and grip strength were returning, and his writing was….

“Jesus Christ Dave I can’t read anything you wrote in here in the last few days. I thought you were doing well! What the hell does this say?” I smiled and held up his book.

“It says…..” he had to think about his comeback for a minute, “Please help me. Don’t let the guy who keeps visiting and saying he is my brother near me. He’s actually a pervert who takes pictures of me naked…. and steals my food.” Then he slowly raised that finger at me.

Ironically, it was on this day that I would actually end up seeing beneath his hospital gown.

“Hey man,” he said quietly, waving me closer. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

“Okay. The nurse said you can’t stand or walk alone anywhere….. just in case. I’ll call one of them.”

“No, there’s not enough time. You need to help get me up and into the bathroom.”

“Ahhhh.… I don’t know.”

“Alex, it’s either you help me, or I go in the bed right now."

“Right. Okay. No problem. It’ll be easy.”

It was a problem. And it was not that easy.

We swiveled him so that his legs hung over the bed, and I hoisted him into a standing position. Unfortunately, I had failed to recognize that I should have had his walker beside us before standing him up, which meant I had to attempt to reach behind me to fish for it while maintaining my bearhug on his body to keep him from falling.

After the walker-wrestling-match had ended, in what I believe was a decisive victory for me, I marched along behind him into the large, accessible washroom.

Once inside, he proceeded to inform me of my next, and most disquieting responsibility.

“Okay Al, I am going to need you to close the door, and help me open this gown and get seated.”

“I’m sorry…. What?”

“I need to sh*t Al. I can’t do this on my own. I can’t even reach the toilet paper.”

“Wait…. So I am wiping your ass when you’re done?”

“You’re going to be wiping the floor if you don’t help me turn around!”

Not knowing what to say or do about the situation, and seeing no other option than to wipe my brother’s butt, I opened up the back of his gown, spun him around, and helped him sit down.

From his new throne, he looked up into my face with a giant smirk and said, “Look you idiot, I can wipe myself, I just can’t reach the toilet paper or anything while I am sitting here. Okay?”

I tried not to seem too relieved, but I also don’t imagine that he would have actually wanted me wiping his butt any more than I would have wanted to. Which is to say, not at all.

“Alright Al, are you ready?”

I turned my back to him. “Just go man.”

And so it was, that on day 90, I stood a few measly feet away from my brother as he emptied his bowels while laughing hysterically (I am assuming at me).

Day 432 - The Recovery

After almost 100 days in the hospital, and over 6 months in a rehabilitation center, Dave came to live with me and continue rehab as an out-patient. For someone who should have died on the side of the road, or in the ambulance that picked him up, or in the helicopter that flew him to surgery, or on the surgeon’s table, the guy had made remarkable progress. At times he would be frustrated or upset because he couldn’t remember a specific word, event or detail. At other times, he would recall things that none of our friends or family even could. He was physically active again, gaining strength, and had even gone back to work for a company he’d trained with years before the accident.

Dave had planned a hunting trip with a few of his close friends and was headed out the door as I got back from walking his dog…. our dog I guess. We bought her as a ‘rehab puppy,’ figuring she would be a good responsibility for us to share, and a way to help us both stay active.

As I shooed her by him into the house, he stopped me and wrapped his arms around me.

“How can this possibly be real?”

It was a question I asked myself every day…. every time I got to hear his voice, or laugh with him, or cry with him, or argue with him.

“I know I say it all the time, but I love ya with all my heart man. Thanks for…. just for being you.”

I squeezed him with everything I had.

He was so much bigger than me, again, just like he’d been before.

The new Dave crushed me in his arms, and made me feel as loved as the old Dave always had, even before we started sharing our ‘long hugs.’

Now, for the first time, I felt like I was finally doing the same.