He failed every time.
Bryan’s face was thinner than Danny’s memories, something he’d gradually grown accustomed to, but today his jaw was covered in a light five-o’clock shadow. Gram and the nurses had spent the last year keeping up a steady system of shaving him, cutting his hair, his fingernails.
Preserving him.
But no one had shaved him today.
Dr. Racine approached Gram’s side of the bed, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It won’t be too much longer now,” he said gently.
Danny straightened as his stomach jolted, sending bile up into the back of his throat.
No. NO.
His heart started racing, urging him to do something. Ask them to perform CPR. Beg them to hook the tube back up. Plead with them to restart the drip.
Don’t. Don’t go yet. Not yet.
His eyes darted to the monitor above the bed; the nurse had silenced it before she turned the drip off, but he could see the long green line, adorned with miniature spikes—tiny hills that crested with every beat of his heart.
Getting further and further apart.
“Come on, Bry. Fight,” he choked out, dropping his head so that his forehead rested on Bryan’s arm.
And then he heard her voice.
Gram was singing to him in her soft, ethereal way—the familiar words he’d heard hundreds of times in his life, whenever he or Bryan was restless, or hurt, or sick.
Or drifting off to sleep.
He’s my treasure, he’s my joy
He’s my pleasure, he’s my boy.
If he ever went away, lonesome I would be
‘Cause he’s my angel, my baby.
Those words had soothed him so many times, but today they rolled off him like drops of rain down the window—fleeting and futile.
Danny squeezed his eyes shut as a barrage of images assaulted him. Bryan’s life, flashing before his eyes—he wasn’t the one dying, but he could feel it happening. He could see it all unfold, as if Bryan were sharing the last few moments of his life with him.
Danny under the deck with a broken leg as Bryan held his hand, reciting batting averages with him to help keep his mind off the pain.
Bryan hanging over the fence of the dugout, shouting and cheering as Danny scored the tying run in their high school’s championship game.
Danny helping Bryan sneak out of his bedroom window to go meet up with his girlfriend on Valentine’s night.
Bryan and Danny sitting on his bedroom floor, laughing hysterically.
Hanging out in the garage, talking into the night under the hood of car.
Trick-or-treating in their matching Batman costumes, because neither one of them wanted to be Robin.
Sharing their first beer in the alley behind the grocery store the summer before eighth grade.
Standing in the middle of the vacant building they’d just purchased, toasting with embarrassingly cheap champagne to the shop they envisioned within its walls.
And then, two little boys. One sitting on the steps outside his house and the other stopped on the sidewalk.
“Hey,” he said curiously. “Why are you sitting outside by yourself?”
The one on the steps shrugged. “‘Cause my mom’s not home.”
“Oh. Well, when will she come home?”
The boy scratched his knee. “Dunno.”
After a few seconds of silence, the other said, “Well…you wanna come to my house? I have a new video game, but it needs two players. My gram doesn’t know how to play it.”
The boy on the steps looked up. “Um…okay.”
“Cool. I’m Bryan.”
“Danny.”
“Do you have any video games?” he asked as Danny approached.
“Not a lot.”
“That’s okay. You can bring what you have next time. We can play every day.”
And for the first time since he woke up that morning, Danny smiled. “Okay.”
“You saved me,” he whispered into the sheet, his forehead still pressed against Bryan’s arm. “You saved me, and I didn’t save you.”
I’m sorry.
I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.
He gritted his teeth until he felt pain in his jaw, chanting the words like an incantation, until they lost all meaning and form and sounded odd in his ears, like indecipherable words from some foreign language.
“Time of death, one nineteen p.m.”
Danny whipped his head up; the monitor was still, the long green line smooth and placid.
Final.
Amanda was hugging Gram, rubbing her back gently as she said something in her ear, and Danny felt a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Dr. Racine said. “Please, take as much time as you need.”
Danny didn’t move as the doctor and the nurse left the room. He didn’t move as Gram tucked the blanket around Bryan, as if she really had just sung him to sleep. He didn’t move as she leaned over and kissed his forehead before brushing his hair out of his eyes.
“My angel boy,” she said gently. “You always had my heart, and you have it still. It’s how I’ll find you when it’s time for us to meet again.”
She turned then and gathered her things before walking carefully toward the door. As she passed Danny, she placed her hand on his arm, giving him a feeble squeeze before she continued out into the hall.
And still, he didn’t move.
He couldn’t. Not before he memorized all of Bryan’s facial expressions. Not before he committed the images to memory. Not before he was sure he could preserve the exactitude of each and every one. He couldn’t let them fade away this time.
Because now, there’d be no way to get them back.
Leah held on to Catherine’s arm as they walked her through the side yard toward her house with Danny supporting her on the other side. She had cried silently on the drive home, the tears trickling discreetly down her face. Every so often she would lift her hand to dab at them with a tissue, but otherwise she didn’t move.
Leah had checked the rearview mirror frequently throughout the drive, but this time Danny wasn’t looking for her. He wasn’t looking for anything. He sat with his forehead on the window—his glassy, bloodshot eyes staring without seeing at whatever was passing by.
As soon as they parked in Catherine’s driveway though, he seemed to snap out of it. His expression was guarded, his voice detached, but he was moving and functioning as he took care of Catherine, helping her out of the car while whispering reassuring words to her.
They helped her into the house, and Danny put on a pot of tea as Leah helped her change out of her clothes. The doctor had prescribed her a small script of sleeping pills for the next few days, and as soon as they all sat down with their mugs, she was asking for one.
Leah could remember that desperate desire for sleep, the need to disappear into a world that offered some type of reprieve from reality, or better yet, a world where—if you were lucky—you would have the good fortune of seeing the person you missed more than anything. She used to dream of her mother often when she was younger, to the point that sometimes she’d have her pajamas on before dinner was even on the table, anticipating the moment she could close her eyes and find her.