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“I’m scared too,” I say and I pull him into a hug. “We’re all scared. But we are going to hold on to each other until we get through this.”
When I release Steven, I’m relieved to find a bit of resolve in his expression. He huffs out an irritated breath and says, “Let’s go find a meeting.”
CHAPTER 32
Lilly
“Lilly?”
Aiden’s soft voice reverberates in the room and my head pops up. I’m where I’ve been sitting for the past three days, in a chair by his bed, my forearms crossed on the bed rail. I’d been resting my forehead there for a few minutes trying to get up the energy to walk down to the nurses’ station for a cup of coffee.
My eyes roam over my brother, noting all the tiny signs I’m either hoping to see or dreading. His voice is weak, of course, the byproduct of his entire body being depleted. But I take hope somewhat in the fact that his eyes are clear. The logical part of me knows this is because he just came out of a sleep facilitated by morphine. Medication is for his comfort if he’s in any pain or has difficulty breathing. As his organs continue to shut down, particularly his lungs, we’ll need to titer up the dosage.
But for now, we have settled into a waiting game. Most days Aiden is in and out of consciousness. Sometimes he’s just sleeping heavily, sometimes he’s floating on morphine. Other times he can stay awake for upward of fifteen minutes or so and carry on a conversation.
He does not eat and he does not drink. All IVs have been removed and he takes the morphine under his tongue via a dropper. His body stopped producing solid waste yesterday and hardly anything comes out of the catheter into the urine bag.
Literally wasting away in front of me, but right now his eyes are open and pinned on me. “Want some ginger ale or something?” I offer.
I know the answer will be no before he even shakes his head. He’s simply not hungry or thirsty. But his mouth is dry and it’s uncomfortable for him. “Some ice chips?”
I feed him a few from a spoon, just enough to wet his throat so talking is comfortable.
He glances around the room and licks at his dry lips. “Where’s Dad?”
“AA meeting down in the hospital chapel. He’ll be back soon.”
“And Boone?”
I give my brother a sly grin. “Down in the cafeteria, seeing what’s on the dessert tray.”
Despite the grim nature of things, we still try to keep our humor. It has become Boone’s mission to get Aiden to eat something. And he’s trying to appeal to the kid’s sweet tooth. He goes down to the cafeteria a couple times a day, hoping to find something that will entice Aiden to take a tiny bite.
So far, no luck.
Aiden’s laugh is dry and husky. “He’s tenacious, I’ll give him that.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Look at you, using big words.”
He reaches his hand out to me and asks, “How are you doing?”
I take his hand in mine and squeeze it gently. It’s mottled with bruises from the IV lines, made obvious now that they’ve been removed. “I can’t believe the kid who’s dying is asking me how I’m doing.”
Yeah… our humor has gotten a little morbid, but this only came on the heels of Aiden demanding that I stop crying yesterday. He said he would refuse to talk to me anymore if we couldn’t laugh about everything.
Yesterday, things changed.
He and I had a long talk and by long I mean a total of maybe seven minutes of clear, lucid conversation. Boone was in the room and had offered to leave, but Aiden told him to stay. Dad was also in the room but he was napping in the recliner. He didn’t hear any of it.
My heart about stopped when Aiden admitted to me, “I’m scared, Lilly. Do you think there’s an afterlife?”
That led to a much deeper discussion than what I’d been prepared for because he was asking me all kinds of questions I’d never bothered to think about in my own life, and I knew I would be searching for answers long after Aiden was gone.
Boone chimed in and talked about heaven and that he believes that’s where Aiden will go. That’s the difference between having religion in your upbringing and not.
After that, I cried because it was upsetting to have those discussions. I decided I would not hold back my emotions. I would not be ashamed of feeling devastated that my brother was dying.
It was then that Aiden cracked a joke about the possibility he could go to hell. He promised he would give Satan so much grief that he’d boot him right out.
