Storymania - Big Brother by Mark Herner

Big Brother
Mark Herner

That night my big brother walks down the hospital corridor towards his wife's room at the quiet end of the hall. I say "walks" but he really strides. He can't help it; Bryan's too big to move any other way.

He's tried, like at his high school graduation when he tried to walk like everybody else. We all thought he was cutting up, like he likes to do, walking like a pansy. But he wasn't, he was just trying to be like everyone else. He switched to his normal walk, his stride, halfway down the aisle after people started to laugh, and not just kids but parents too. He was proud (and lucky, some said) to be graduating with his class and wouldn't have dreamed of acting a fool on such an important day.

He'd had some trouble with school but he worked hard. He deserved his diploma, more so than most of those kids who found school so easy, at least until they got to college. I know he worked hard because I helped him, mostly with math and English, late at night. Frustrated with him and hissing under my breath so our parents wouldn't hear, "God damn it, Big Brother, this just isn't that hard!"

I say "Big Brother" but actually I guess I'm the big brother, since I'm 3 years older. He'd blink two or three times and wipe his big hand across the top of his head, over that bristly way-out-of-style crew cut that he still wears and he'd say, "Listen. I know it's not hard for you, or for everybody else. But it's hard for me. OK?" Never cussing like his big brother, he'd start again, me feeling like an asshole for belittling him, doing the same problems over again.

They'd begged him to play football and he had, never really liking it much, not making the big catches or throwing the winning pass. But I'll be damned if he couldn't sweep two, or even three, of the opponent's linemen into those big arms and just throw 'em down on the field. Then dare them to get up. They'd usually stay down, acting like they're dazed or feeling around for their lost mouthguard or some shit like that. I don't blame them, man. He is big, not fat, but massive, all bone and gristle and meat.

Parents would call him "Hoss", like Hoss Cartright on Bonanza. "Hit-'em-hard-Hoss!" they'd call to him from the stands. The other kids never called him "Hoss". They called him "Bry" and he liked that too. The little grade-school kids called him "Milton", like Milton the Monster, from that old cartoon show and he'd chase 'em around, snarling and growling. They'd run away squealing and screaming but always come right back for more, until he couldn't even talk to people. "Hey Milton. Come get us Milton!" until he'd finally have to leave, pretending he had to go to the bathroom just to get away. But they'd be waiting for him when he came out. Some of the kids were really too old to be acting that way but they just wanted to do something with him, be close to him, and they didn't know what else to do.

Then again later, when he married Jody, he tried to walk a normal walk, out to the altar from the side of the church. He got as far as the edge of the carpet when his big rented tuxedo shoe caught on that metal strip and he almost went down. But his best man, "Nimmer", caught his arm and steadied him. He'd embarrassed himself and he'd embarrassed Jody but everyone else just loved him more for it. Jody's dad had tears running down his face and they weren't all just for Jody's going away. When he gave her away to Bryan, he shook hands longer than seemed normal, grasping Bryan's hand with both of his, knowing his little girl couldn't possibly be with anyone better.

�

�

When Jody first got sick, she and Bryan met with her doctor, Dr Wolf, an older Jewish doctor with deep-set blue eyes and bushy eyebrows. She'd passed out a few times and they did some tests and, yes, it was cancer, just like that, it was definitely cancer. Bryan just couldn't understand it, like one of his old math problems. He just couldn't see how this could happen so quickly.

Of course he understood the medical part pretty well. After high school, he'd taken my advice and gotten one of the few jobs left for big men with no college. He probably could have played pro ball. They said he was good enough.

"I don't wanna play games," he told me, "I wanna help people".

So I said, "Be a fireman!" It was a stroke of fucking genius--perfect for Bryan--and that's where he learned some emergency medicine. And he's good at it. Hell, he's already saved two people's lives.

One was an old man who'd driven into a gas station, not just to get some gas, but right into the fucking building, right in the front door! He'd had a heart attack and Bryan shocked him back with the paddles.

And then a young woman, who came home with a new boyfriend, drunk, and they had a fight. He left and she went to sleep with a lit cigarette. Bryan brought her out of the burning house in his big arms, naked and not breathing from all the smoke. With her still in his arms, he knelt down on one knee, pinched her nose closed and put his mouth over hers. Well, she woke up and she was still drunk, 'cause she misunderstood and wanted to fuck him right then and there, she was so confused. Bryan'll never hear the end of it and I think she moved away.

So at first everyone was all confident and positive that Jody would lick this thing, sure that she'd be just fine. But a year later, after chemo and radiation and surgery and more chemo, that fucking cancer was everywhere, right down to her spine, and there wasn't a God-damned thing anybody could do about it.

�

That night, when Bryan was walking down the hospital corridor to Jody's room, he'd just been talking with Doctor Wolf, who'd been saying how there was nothing else to do, how they'd done everything possible, how sorry he was that there wasn't more he could do, and how he hated this part of being a doctor. And it really did tear up poor old Doctor Wolf. He retired shortly after Jodi died and stood at her funeral with his head hanging, like he was ashamed and embarrassed of something.

As it turned out, that night, the night Bryan talked to Dr Wolf and strode down the hall, that night turned out to be Jody's last. Nobody had any idea. In fact, Dr Wolf had just said that, even though there was nothing else to be done, she was not in pain because of the morphine and that Jody could hang on for quite a while.

"Hang on," Brian mumbled as he strode down the hall, his eyes red from no sleep and no hope and maybe from that smelly trash fire run this afternoon. "Hang on, baby."

The hospital floor was quiet. He and Dr Wolf had talked in an empty patient room until well after the end of visiting hours and most of the patients were asleep or watching television with their pillow speakers next to their heads. The nurses had done the evening meds and had settled down to paperwork, diet Cokes and gossip.

Bryan strode into Jody's room, blinked and dragged his hand across the top of his head, noticing that the IV pump was in the corner with the tubing coiled around the stand, no longer connected to Jody's arm. A thin piece of tubing, taped into her forearm, allowed the nurses to keep her free of pain, and a little crazy, with doses of morphine. A small radio transmitter, strapped around her waist and connected to electrodes on her chest, let them watch her heart and breathing on a screen at the nurse's station, set to alarm if either goes too high or too low.

Brian pulled a small chair up to Jody's bed and whispered, "Hon?"

She didn't respond, her head on the pillow, face to one side, her hair brushed shiny by the nurses and still pretty, even after all the chemo. (Surprisingly, the chemotherapy hadn't made her hair fall out. But then, it hadn't killed her fucking cancer either, had it?)

"Jody?" he asked, a little louder this time, "Honey?" and he put his big hand under the blanket, under her nightgown and onto her flat bare tummy, rubbing gently in a circle and then down, just to her soft hair.

"Mmmmmm. Where's Bobby?" her voice soft and dreamy, a little raspy from being asleep. Bobby was her older brother, killed in a Vietnam helicopter crash.

"He'll be here soon, baby," Bryan lies, knowing she won't remember in 30 seconds.

"Mmmm, that's nice," she moans, not clear if she means her dead brother or Bryan's warm hand on her. She opens her eyes and looks right through Bryan, her eyes clear and green and without bottoms, saying, "I wanna walk. Can we walk?"

"I don't know if you can, baby. You're pretty loose. Can you stand up?"

She sat on the edge of the bed, weak and wobbly, head back, looking at the ceiling. With Bryan close, his hands out, alert like a gymnastics spotter, she pushes herself up onto her feet, but just for a moment, before falling back onto the bed with a squeal.

"Wheeeeee," she sang, high, like a little girl, "I wanna go for a ride". "Take me for a ride, Bryan," she sang, knowing his name, knowing he's there and knowing that he could take her for a ride if he wanted to.

"I don't think they'd want me to do that. Not now. Everyone's asleep."

Jody looked toward him, tried to look at him, to focus on him but couldn't and said, very deliberately, each word separate and distinct, "Carry..please..Bryan..now" and for just a tiny second their eyes caught. A thrill raced down his spine like a fleeing snake, his arms and legs rough, as the hairs stood up. He wiped his hand across the top of his head and said, "Sure baby, you bet. Let's go!"

He picked her up in his big arms and, with her own thin arms around his neck, she nuzzled into his wide chest like it was a sleeping bag. He strode out of the room and into the empty, dimly lit corridor, carrying Jody in his arms, his lip quivering, tears streaming down his cheeks and his nose running like a first-day cold. They'd just passed the third room down the hall, when he felt her go slack in his arms, felt her head lolling down his chest, her cool face settling on his bare arm and he knew then that she was gone. An alarm sounded down the hall in the nurse's station and a red light in the ceiling began to flash. An older nurse ran into the hallway, saw Bryan with Jody in his arms and knew what had happened. "Jenny, call a code and get house staff up here stat. Linda, get the crash cart down here and charge for 360. Don't forget to gel the paddles"

Bryan could barely hear the commotion, could see the lights blinking in star shapes through his tears and knew that people were running. But he kept walking, holding her loose body to his chest until the young house staff doctors were there, the med students and the pharmacist and the respiratory therapist and the chaplain lurking in the background. He put her down on the floor for them, careful not to bang her head, and walked, differently, back to her room to be alone until they came to tell him what he already knew.

September, 1998