Page 90 of Brother to Brother

“He’s beautiful!” Mel said and she looked exhausted, she dragged her head woozily to look at Doc over the drape and asked, “Why don’t I feel right? The room is spinning, and I – ”

Her eyes rolled back in her head and her arms dropped, if I hadn’t had a hold of Chandler she would have surely dropped him. A nurse reached around and straightened me up.

“Doc? What’s happening?” I demanded but the old man ignored me, in favor of digging around in my wife’s stomach.

“God damn it!” he cried, “I can’t fucking find it. Where are you, you little bastard?”

Something was terribly wrong witheverythingthat had just come out his mouth. I shifted from foot to foot and said, “Talk to me, man! What’s wrong with my wife?”

“Get him out of here, take the baby, let me get this done – suction!”

I was ushered out into the hall and stood numbly outside the OR doors, watching Doc’s back through the little pane of glass as nurses and more doctors rushed around my wife. Alarms were going off, saline and even bags of blood were hung as they worked frantically to save her.

I cradled Chandler to my chest, as he wailed and cried repeatedly for his mother and it was everything I could do to stay sane and not completely lose my shit. I watched, and watched, and the seconds dragged on into minutes and the minutes on into tens of minutes and Doc continued to work frantically, ceding to an actual surgeon who had come onto the floor,runningdown the hall, to push past me and my newborn son.

I watched monitors and numbers flash, lines bounce, readouts grow fainter, the alarms in the room screeching almost louder than my boy when a hand touched my shoulder. I jerked back and looked down at the nurse who was speaking, but I couldn’t process what she was saying. She was trying to take Chandler away from me, and I let her – something in the back of my brain agreeing thatyes, this was bestfor him. She said, “I’m going to take him to the nursery, he’s just fine. You stay here with your wife.”

The sympathetic look she gave me was enough to make me want to throttle her, and then I don’t know how, but Rush and Nox were there, standing shoulder to shoulder with me, holding me up as the line on the screen went flat and I just couldn’t watch anymore. I couldn’t watch her die. I couldn’t do this without her…

I turned around and collapsed back against the wall, sliding to the floor, the twins bracing me as the sobs came and wouldn’t stop. She was everything to me, and I couldn’t fathom it. I couldn’t fathom doingany of thiswithout her. That’s just not the way it was supposed tobe.

Mel had a fire inside, and it wasn’t supposed to be snuffed out like this, there was nothing tiny nothing spark-like, she hada fireinside and this was not how it was supposed to go out!

I bowed my head and raised my knees, bracing my forearms on them and lost my fucking shit in the hallway. I sobbed like a little fucking girl and didn’t give a shit who fucking saw me.

Melody, our family, our love and life together. We were just getting started and if there was a God, which I didn’t personally believe there was, he was a cruel fucking bastard if he was going to rip it away like this. I closed my eyes, supported by my two brothers and pulled out all the stops, powerless in the face of all of this, I did something I had never done before, not once, not ever…

I fucking prayed,if you’re up there, you son of a bitch, prove it to me. You leave her alone. You don’t take her from me, not now, not yet. Just leave her here. For our sons, for me, for everyone’s life she just makes brighter just by breathing… you leave her down here for us.

Frantic voices filtered through the doors to one side and at my back. Shouting messages back and forth, all indistinct enough I couldn’t make out words, but distinct enough in the emotion that they held. They were losing this fight and I was losing my wife, my children were losing their mother.

“Please, God don’t you take her from me,” I uttered and Rush and Nox both did their best to shore me up but there wasn’t anything they could do, just like there wasn’t anythingIcould do. I was helpless, powerless to stop this from happening and it was probably the worst fucking feeling in the world.

The door swung open, and Doc came out into the hallway. He bowed and rested his hands on his knees for a minute before straightening up. He pulled at the surgical gown, saturated with Melody’s blood and swept the surgical cap off his bald head. I looked up, and just stared, waiting, breath held…

Doc looked down at me, the tension draining from his shoulders, his face unreadable, and my whole fucking world crashed and burned, skidding along the asphalt of the road called life leaving me raw all the way to the fucking bone.

Epilogue

Archer

Four months later

Shit, we were going to be late. Noah was standing next to me on the family courthouse steps while I held Chandler in my arms, and he was being a demanding little shit.

“Daddy up! I want up! Daddy!”

“Noah, you need to stop, Little Man, I got Littler Man here, I can’t hold you both!”

“Daddy!” Noah held his chubby little arms up and opened and closed his hands and I swore to myself in my head.

“I’ll take him so you can get Noah,” Nox said and I passed my baby boy to my brother so I could lift my big boy up. Of course the second I relinquished Chandler to Nox was the second he started to fuss and cry, kicking his little legs in their blue footied onesie and declaring his unhappiness with a sharp, piercing cry.

I picked up Noah who was yelling louder and louder for me to do so and hitched him high on my hip. I guess I couldn’t blame Noah for wanting to be the center of attention, it was, after all, his day.

Still, and not for the first time since Chandler was born, I thought to myself,I just can’t do this alone.

“I’ve got it! Let’s go!” Melody called and came running up the steps, her stylish flats slapping the cement.

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