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“Smith,” I supply.
My pulse spikes up as Luke’s eyes roll back in his head.
“It’ll just relax him. Not a bad thing.”
But it doesn’t. His eyes open a few seconds later. They jump all around the room until he settles on me. He groans, “Vance?”
“I’m right here. See.”
I touch his calf, covered by blankets.
His mouth presses flat, which makes him wince because of his raw lips.
“He needs chapstick,” I say as another nurse steps in. A moment later, one of them steps by me on their way out of the space and drops a small tube into my hand.
“Thank you.”
I move up by his head and twist the cap of the chapstick off. It’s really more like Vaseline. I put some on my finger, hesitating just a second before touching his lips.
His eyes slit open.
“It’s okay.” I brush my lips over his hair. When I realize what I just did, I feel almost faint with alarm. I’m crouched by his head. I stand slowly up.
His arm reaches toward me. “Vance.”
He’s only happy when I’m down right by him. All his shaking’s stopped, and he does seem more sedated. Still, every minute or two, he’ll open his eyes and look around for me.
“You’re okay.”
“Hold my hand.” It’s a low groan.
Something touches my shoulder. I blink at a woman in a white coat. “Mr. Smith. We’re taking your brother to CT now. You can wait here.”* * *I wait in a chair outside the curtained area for more than an hour, getting more pissed off each second. Finally, a nurse comes.
“Where’s Luke?”
“We’ve moved him. He’s stable,” she starts. “He got upset during CT—wanting you…is what I think was going on there. We gave more sedation and he’s sleeping now in ICU.”
My heart flips. “ICU?”
“Did no one tell you? He’s septic—with pneumonia. Has he had the flu?”
“Last week.”
She leads me through two sets of doors, into a vast room full of curtained areas and beeping. My heart kicks into my throat at the smell: alcohol and plastic. Like when Mom died.
I don’t like the ICU. I like it so much less when I’m led into his small room, and he’s laid out on a hospital bed, crisscrossed with wires and tubing and unclothed except a sheet that covers his hips. A blonde nurse sits on a stool beside him. A male one is doing something to the IV tower. Luke’s arms are laid at his sides, his palms turned up so I can see the tubes and tape and mottled bruising on the inside of his wrists and elbows. Machines tower over the bed. I notice a bigger mask over his mouth and nose, a bandage taped to his throat. What, did he get bitten by a vampire?
I stand by him, looking down. I feel like I might get sick.
“Luke?” I say it quietly, so that no one else can really hear me.
When he doesn’t answer, I reach down and touch his hair.
“We gave him a lot of sedation. He’s a fighter, and he wasn’t happy with that CVC at all.”
Something rumbles behind me, and I turn to see the dude nurse has pushed up a seat beside the bed rail. “The CVC is his line.” He gestures to the vampire bite. “It’s under that bandage on his neck—or would have been, if we’d been able to get it in there.”
All of that is Greek to me. My eyes feel achy. I grit my teeth, and the blonde nurse hands me a tissue just as my eyes start to leak.
“He’s doing really well actually.” She nods at him. “This is just BiPAP—the mask. And he’s doing very well on it. If he can stay stable for twelve hours, we may even bump him out into a floor room.”27VanceHe comes awake sometimes, and he seems scared and upset. When he shivers, they won’t cover him up, because his fever is still high. The antibiotics haven’t kicked in fully. Once, he tries to reach for me. The nurses hold him down, acting like the act of him wanting to touch me means he must be near hallucinating.
That I can only hold his hand—can’t stroke his face or rub his neck or kiss him—makes me feel like I might suffocate or scream at someone. Finally, I think around the time it’s getting to be morning, I’m told they’ll remove the biPAP mask soon.
“His lungs are looking very good,” a short, freckled doctor tells me. “We did biPAP as a precaution, and I think we made the right call in avoiding full-on ventilation. I don’t think he’s headed toward mechanical ventilation. The worst are his kidneys, but I think they’re perking up. You’ll get moved to the floor later this evening if all remains well, and they can turn the biPAP off.” The doctor pauses before leaving. “Your brother is my favorite author. When he’s lucid, tell him one of his caretakers was a big fan.”
