Page 28 of Penalty to the Heart

This one… would just scare her.

I did us both a favor in letting her go on her merry way, never to see me again.

“You can always say no.”

She said those words when some nurse tracked me down to get an autograph and selfie. She was genuinely appalled by the nurse’s misconduct, so much so that I didn’t have the heart to tell her that shit like that happens to me every day.

“Everyone is entitled to privacy.”

Another humdinger of hers.

Before the accident, I might have said the same thing.

Not anymore.

Not when my family’s pain and suffering are exploited for the sake of higher ratings on the nine o’clock news.

Yet, I could tell she wanted to help me. Thing is… I’m beyond help.

So, I add the encounter to the long list of what-ifs.

She was just a hiccup in my routine.

A routine that’s become almost second nature to me now.

Hockey practice in the morning, hospital visits in the afternoon, and then check on Erin and the girls in the evening.

That’s the sum of my life now, and I fucking hate that I’ve settled into this new norm so easily.

Especially when it feels like I’m sleepwalking through most of it.

Still, I make a good show out of it.

I pretend that everything is good and dandy with me, that I’m still the same cocky asshole I was before. However, the minute I step into his room and close the door behind me, all pretenses vanish into thin air.

I take a fortifying breath and turn the corner, knowing I’m just a few feet away from the only place I can wear my scars without having to worry that someone is going to see them on display.

Upon entering Jack’s room, I quickly close the door while doing my best to ignore the overwhelming smell of antiseptic, the sharp tang stinging my nostrils. After I’ve locked myself inside, I swiftly draw the blinds down on the windows facing the busy corridor to give us some privacy. The sound of machines humming and beeping in a rhythmic chorus fills the sterile air, creating a dissonant and macabre symphony. Still, as I turn around to face my brother lying motionless in his hospital bed, the room suddenly feels suffocatingly silent, save for the erratic pounding of my own heart in my chest.

Ignoring my racing heartbeat, I pick up the chair stored in the corner of the room and place it by his bed. I then proceed to grab my brother’s hand and let out the pent-up breath that I’ve been holding since I woke up in the morning.

This has become another regular part of my routine—how I mechanically go through the motions, ticking off each item on my list before I can finally take a breath and reflect on the dismal life we’ve somehow found ourselves in.

Silently, I sit by my brother’s bedside and stare at the steady rise and fall of his chest as the ventilator assists his breathing while my mind races back to the vivid memory of the night that shattered our lives forever.

I remember every detail of that fateful night—the screeching tires of the truck just before the deafening crash and the chaos that followed. I recall in painful clarity the fear that gripped me when I saw my brother trapped against the steering wheel, battered and broken. The memory is so fucking intense that I can still smell the metallic scent of blood hanging heavy in the air around me.

There was so much blood…

So goddamn much.

I was out cold in my own hospital bed as the doctors worked tirelessly to save Jack’s life. They battled for hours to fix his spleen after it ruptured and did everything they could to stabilize his perforated lung.

But in the end, it was the brain hemorrhage that became the greatest threat to his life.

The emergency surgery to alleviate the pressure in his brain had been vital, prompting the need to induce Jack into a coma to increase his chances of survival.

But weeks have passed since that operation, and still, my brother lies motionless, trapped in a deep slumber. The doctors swear that his body is healing, but it’s his mind that remains a mystery to us all, locked away behind closed eyelids. The doctors offer words of hope, of possibilities of awakening, but the uncertainty gnaws at me like a relentless beast.

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