IV

MY BROTHER’S KEEPER

For this failure and for no other fault
Here we are lost, and our sole punishment
Is without hope to live on in desire.
— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy

THE SURGICAL INTENSIVE CARE UNIT lies beyond a set of wood-paneled double doors with narrow windows. There’s an intercom mounted on the wall. I press the button and wait. A few seconds later a woman’s voice replies through the small, tinny speaker. “May I help you?”

“My name is Yelena Gorgo,” I say through the thick mask strapped over my nose and mouth. “My brother is Jack Moreau. I was told he was on this floor. I should be on the list.”

The automatic doors release and open toward me. A nurse approaches before I can cross the threshold. She’s wearing blue scrubs, a hair net, shoe covers, gloves, safety glasses and an N95 mask.

“Hello,” she says with an unexpected perkiness for seven in the morning while craning her neck backward to look up at me. “I’m Megan, your brother’s critical care nurse. Come this way. I’ll take you to him.”

I follow her though the doors and down a wide hallway. Patient rooms are on the left, beyond floor-to-ceiling glass windows, sliding doors, and curtains shielding the darkened rooms from view. The medical station is ahead on the right, where a crew of nurses and doctors are huddled around monitors or engaged in conversation.

I say, “Can you tell me anything about his condition?”

“Unfortunately not,” she says. “You aren’t currently authorized for me to disclose that information. You’ll have to speak with Mr. Quinlan about that.”

Quinlan, my brother’s fiduciary and private lawyer, is the man who contacted me late last night to inform me of Jack’s accident.

“Here we are,” Megan says while sliding the door open, then moves aside to allow me to enter. I move through the frame and gently move the curtain aside. The smell is the first thing I notice as the fabric moves aside. It’s a bitter, antiseptic odor with no undertones of artificial fragrance to soften the burn in my nose. Then, once I’m inside and the door closes behind me, I see my brother in the bed, hooked to countless wires and tubes. He’s unrecognizable under the bandages and splints and his body is unmoving other than the mechanical rise and fall of his chest powered by the ventilator moving air in and out of his lungs.

I don’t even notice Quinlan at first, not until he stands from the bedside chair. He’s in his fifties, with feathery, silver hair and a neatly trimmed goatee sticking out of the bottom of his mask. His suit looks expensive and he carries himself like a wealthy person who’s never had a care in his life but a genuine look of sower has soured his features.

“Ms. Gorgo,” he says quietly while walking toward me while holding his hand out. I take it and give a firm shake.

“Yelena,” I correct him. After all, we must remain congenial.

“Yelena, yes.” He forces a smile and nods his head while occasionally looking over at poor old Jack. “Thank you for coming at such short notice.”

“To be honest, I’m a little surprised to be here. When I told everyone I was his sister, he did not react positively.”

“Oh, no,” he says, almost with a little chuckle. “Jack was, I mean is, skeptical. However, after the interview you did where you supplied the pictures and other, ah, curious information, he asked me to look into it on behalf of his estate.”

He talks with his hands a lot.

“And though I cannot say definitively that you and Jack share the same father, I found enough information to warrant clarification, which is why I suggested he agree to a DNA test only a week ago. He refused but he did agree to a concession.”

“When I spoke to him Saturday, he seemed rather against the idea. What sort of concession?”

He starts to say something but stops and looks back to his client. In a softer voice, he says, “They say he might be aware of his surroundings and even hear us. Can you imagine such a horror? Come closer to the door.”

He moves me with a careful hand on my arm over to the glass, where he continues his point quiet enough the near-dead could not possibly hear him.

He says, “Jack’s advance directive had very specific instructions on what would happen if a situation such as this were to occur. One, I am granted power of attorney to oversee any medical or financial decisions in case he were to be rendered unable to do so himself or in the unfortunate case of death. Now, as you likely know, Jack has an adoptive brother, and by law, if he were to pass away, those assets would transfer to the brother. However, Jack did not care for adoptive family and specifically stated they would not have any say in his care or receive any assets in his passing. Under the provisions of his advanced directive, in case of death, I would be responsible to distribute his assets to a list of chosen charities and ventures. That is, of course, until a week ago.”

The mechanical whirs and beeps of the various machines are a chaotic composition of aggravation and discord and their combined cacophony is making it hard to be patient with this man. “Don’t hesitate for dramatic effect. Simply tell me what I need to know.” It’s hard to tell because of the mask but it’s almost like he’s smiling at my remark.

He says, “You are much like him,” with a wave of his hand. “Anyway, yes, a week ago he called me to amend his advanced directive. Essentially everything remains the same except he added a clause which states that in the case a blood relative is discovered, that person shall become governor of his assets and be granted power of attorney over all financial and medical decisions, as well as being named sole heir.”

Deep in the hollow part of my chest, a laugh begins to build, and build, and build, to the point where I’m afraid I cannot contain it from bursting out and filling this horrible little room with mad cackles. I save myself the embarrassment by biting down hard on the inside of my cheek, causing enough pain to cease the hilarity and fill my mouth with blood. After clearing my throat and swallowing, I place my hand on his shoulder.

“What do I need to do? All I want is to make sure my brother is cared for.”

LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!

“I have already arranged with the hospital to do a DNA test. I am told the results can be ready by this evening, if you agree. I only need to signal to the nurse that you are ready.”

“I am, but before we do that, the very perky nurse could not tell me anything about his condition. Can you please give me an idea of what happened?”

His eyes grow dark at the question and his voice grows heavy as it tries to make sense of it all. “He was at the bar at the Bellagio and had gotten quite drunk. A security guard did not recognize him as one of their high rollers, likely due to the damage he sustained to his face in his wrestling match. He was seen to the door and sent outside into the cold, at which point he started walking toward the strip. He called his lawyer in Louisiana and while on the phone with him he stepped off the sidewalk in front of a city bus. Multiple broken bones, including a skull fracture. He’s lucky to be alive, they say. Had he been pulled under…”

I know exactly what that would have looked like. A few months back when I was in New Orleans I saw a man get run over by a bus and dragged halfway down the street until there was nothing left of him but blood and chunks.

“They brought him here and immediately sent him into surgery. His spleen was shredded, they say, and his lungs had collapsed. There was also a small tear in his aorta. Then there were the broken bones. Multiple ribs. His left arm, hip and ankle, and his skull was also fractured. He currently has a section of it removed because of the intracranial swelling.”

“Oh my god,” I say while bringing my hand to my face. Is that a little tear running down from my left eye? I’d like to thank the Academy. “Do they think he will come out of this? Is he still there?”

“They can’t say yet. Even if he does survive, there’s no guarantee he will ever wake up. If he does, there will be significant disabilities. As you can imagine, if you were his guardian in such a situation, he would require constant care. You must know this if you were to take on this responsibility, assuming the test comes back a match, of course.”

“Fetch the nurse,” I say while looking at poor old Jack with feigned sadness. “I will take the DNA test and, Mr. Quinlan—”

“Yes, my dear?”

“When it confirms that he is my brother, I promise you I will do whatever it takes to provide him with the necessary care to survive this tragedy and recover as much of his former self as medically possible. Now, if you don’t mind, may I have a moment with him while you arrange the test? You did say that they believe he can hear us, yes?”

“Indeed,” he says with a newfound warmth at my charade. “I will go immediately. Take your time. I only regret that it is after such a horrific accident that you two will be brought closer, but it is better to have happened now than never, I suppose.”

He disappears through the door and slides it shut behind him. Once he’s gone from my sight I walk over to the bedside. My hand reaches down to his and I curl my fingers about his wrist while bending down closer to the side of his head.

“It’s me, Nathan. Your sister. The one you refused to acknowledge. I imagine had you shown only a small amount of humility you wouldn’t be in this situation but what the truth is, you are exactly what I fear’d you would be. Weak, just like your mother.”

The space between the steady beep of the heart monitor grows shorter as his heart rate begins to rise.

“I hope you live, brother. I do, because I know that is what our father would want, even if it means you are suffering in a vegetative state, trapped in a body that can never recover, because that is what you deserve for your weakness. You could have been like me. You could have been like our father. Instead, you are a quitter, just like that bitch Jacquiline Moreau.”

The door slides open. I stand up and turn to Quinal enter, followed by a male nurse pushing a cart with the required equipment to take a blood sample. He seems to notice the elevated heart rate.

“Is he in pain, you think,” I ask with a light, concerned voice. “I hate the thought of him suffering.”

“I’ll talk to the doctor about increasing his morphine,” the nurse says while slipping on a pair of nylon gloves. “Take a seat please. This won’t take but a moment.”

I sit down in the uncomfortable chair and pull my left arm out of my jacket. While he ties the rubber tube around my bicep and begins feeling along the inside of my elbow for a suitable vein, I watch Jack lay there helplessly as I take back all the gifts our father bestowed upon him and hope that he is completely aware that his life will be nothing more than grains of sand slipping through my fingers.