Signs of Life (2 page)

“What about you, Jase? You’re deploying again soon, right?”

“We’re about four months into our workups, gonna mobilize in probably two more months, go back to Afghanistan.”

“You have someone to watch your back over there?”

“I got a great team watching my back, but there’s this guy that I’m pretty good friends with. Carey will watch my six.”

“Good.”

Jeremy lapsed into silence again, scrubbing his hands over his face and clutching his hair as he blew out a huge, frustrated breath.

Just then a nurse walked over to where they sat, saying, “Mr. Speer, you can go back in now.” She led them to the Authorized Personnel Only door, swiped her access card, and pushed the doors open. They followed her to an empty exam room, and she swished away, leaving them alone.

Jeremy and Jase stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, and when a doctor walked in a few minutes later, Jase faded back to lean against the wall, a solid and comforting presence in Jeremy’s peripheral vision.

“Mr. Speer, I’m Dr. Bayless. I’ve been taking care of your husband.” Jeremy nodded, and the doctor indicated a couple of chairs set against the wall. “Let’s sit down.”

When they did the doctor leaned forward, his elbows on his widespread knees, his hands dangling between them. His tired eyes met Jeremy’s.

“Mr. Speer, Brent has suffered a catastrophic brain injury. When the truck hit him broadside, his head hit the side window very hard.”

Jeremy felt like he’d been turned to stone, unable to comprehend what the doctor was saying. “What?” he choked out. “Are you saying he has brain damage? Is he awake?”

The doctor’s eyes held his, full of compassion. “Brent isn’t going to wake up, Mr. Speer. He’s—there’s just no easy way to say this. When his head hit the window, the side of his skull was crushed and pieces of it were driven into his brain. For all intents and purposes, he died just minutes after the accident. They were able to resuscitate him at the scene, and we can keep his body alive indefinitely, but scans show no brain activity, and there will be no meaningful recovery. I’m sorry.”

Jeremy felt a huge band crush his chest, and he started to gasp for air. Suddenly Jase was there, kneeling next to him, as Jeremy leaned down between his own knees and vomited all over the floor. Jase didn’t flinch, didn’t move away, just pulled Jeremy to him and held him.

“Breathe, buddy. Just breathe. I got you.”

Jeremy fought for air, fought with all his strength to keep from fainting, a wounded animal sound filling the room, and he realized it was coming from him. Jase cupped his head and held it to his broad chest as he rocked Jeremy, murmuring, “Shh, Jere. Shh. I’ve got you.”

Jeremy clutched at him until he finally got some control, pulling away from Jase. He was dry-eyed, but his voice shook as he said, “Brent has a living will. He doesn’t want to be kept alive by artificial means.”

“That was going to be my next question,” Dr. Bayless said. “You are his next of kin, so you’ll have some difficult decisions to make in the next twenty-four hours.”

“I want to see him,” Jeremy said hoarsely.

“Of course.” The doctor stood up. “I’ll take you to him.” Jase stood up as well and helped Jeremy to his feet, steadying him when he swayed.

“I’m coming with you, buddy, but I’ll wait outside the room, okay? I’ll be here.” Jeremy could only nod, grateful beyond words for Jase’s support.

Dr. Bayless led them through a maze of corridors. Jase didn’t touch him, but he was close enough Jeremy could feel his body heat. One time Jeremy stumbled and Jase gripped his elbow and steadied him, releasing him immediately but sticking close.

They finally stopped outside a doorway, and Dr. Bayless turned to Jeremy. “I want to prepare you for what you’ll see in there,” he said. “Brent is hooked up to life support. There’s a machine breathing for him and lots of different monitors making lots of noise. His head is heavily bandaged and he was cut from flying glass.”

Jeremy’s eyes filled with tears but he blinked them back determinedly.

“He’s not in any pain,” Dr. Bayless said gently. “Spend as much time as you want, Mr. Speer. We’ll talk soon.” He patted Jeremy’s shoulder and left them. Jeremy stared after him then sank onto a nearby chair, Jase settling next to him.

“I want to go in there, but at the same time, I don’t want to see him like that, Jase,” Jeremy said in a tortured voice. “My last memory of him is a good one. He was happy, and we’d just—” he trailed off, tears clogging his throat. “We have the baby coming; he was feeling better. It was the first time he’d even wanted to leave the house by himself in—oh God.” He buried his face in his hands, feeling Jase’s soothing touch on his back.

“For what it’s worth, Jere, I think you need to see him, to say—to say good-bye.” Jase’s voice was thick with grief too. “You might regret it someday if you don’t.” Jeremy nodded, knowing Jase was right, and he pulled every shred of his composure and strength around him like a cloak before standing and pushing open the door.

The room was brightly lit, harsh, the cacophony from the various machines surrounding the bed assaulting Jeremy’s ears like a jackhammer. A steady whoosh-whoosh sound came from the ventilator that was keeping Brent alive—no, Brent’s
body
alive. The essence of Brent was gone forever, Jeremy knew, and what remained was only an empty shell.

He stepped closer and put a shaking hand on Brent’s leg, about the only part of him that was free of tubes or wires or tape. Brent’s face was almost totally obscured by both the thick bandage wrapped around his head and the ventilator tubing sticking from his mouth and the tape holding it down. Really all that was visible were Brent’s nose and chin, a chin that was bristling with blond five o’clock shadow. Jeremy reached out and brushed his fingers over the stubble, feeling the rasp.

“Oh, babe,” he choked. “Look at you.” Brent’s bare arms, sticking out of a hospital gown, were covered with deep cuts, and there were more on his half-exposed chest, along with monitor leads and wires everywhere.

There were IVs stuck in the backs of Brent’s hands, but Jeremy was able to thread their fingers together. Brent’s fingers were warm, alive, such a cruel and vicious illusion. Brent wasn’t alive. He would never open those beautiful blue eyes that Jeremy loved to get lost in. He would never smile again, make love, hold their baby… the baby Brent had wanted so much. Jeremy’s knees collapsed and he sank onto the chair next to the bed, pressing Brent’s hand to his lips.

Time passed in a numb haze as Jeremy sat there, clutching Brent’s hand. Nurses came and went silently as they checked monitors, adjusted things, never intruding. Finally Jeremy felt a touch on his shoulder and he turned to see Jase standing there, his eyes rimmed with weariness and pain.

“I gotta go report back in, Jere, but I have time to run by your house and grab you some stuff, a couple of changes of clothes, whatever. Okay? Unless I can convince you to go home and get a little sleep.”

Jeremy shook his head.

“Okay, bud. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Jeremy handed over his keys and slumped down in his chair, holding Brent’s warm hand, rubbing his thumb over the backs of Brent’s fingers. It wasn’t like there was a choice to make. Even if Brent hadn’t made his wishes clear in his living will, Jeremy would never subject the body of the man he loved to a torture sentence like this. It was just taking that final step, saying the words aloud that acknowledged Brent was gone forever.

So he just sat, holding on to Brent as best he could, until Jase came back and set a duffle bag in the corner. He then knelt by Jeremy’s chair.

“I gotta get back to base, but I’ll talk to my chief, take some emergency leave. When you—when it’s gonna happen—” Jase’s voice trailed off, but Jeremy knew what he was trying to say. “I want to be here for you—afterward, okay?”

Jeremy nodded, his emotions locked away so tightly that he didn’t feel anything. “I’m going to spend a little more time with him, but I expect to make the decision by morning. I won’t put him through any more of this. It’s not what he would have wanted.”

Jase’s eyes welled with tears even as Jeremy’s own were dry as a bone.

“Okay, bud,” Jase said thickly. “I’ll be back in the morning, okay?”

He stood, kissing Jeremy on the top of the head quickly before striding out of the room.

More time passed until Jeremy became aware of Dr. Bayless standing silently next to the bed, flipping through a chart. He met Jeremy’s eyes but didn’t say anything, and finally Jeremy cleared his throat, his voice rusty and hoarse as he said, “I’m going to let him go.”

Dr. Bayless didn’t look away, just nodded.

“How long will it—will it take?” Jeremy felt like there was ground glass in his throat, and his whole body hurt with a physical pain that was almost unbearable, his skin feeling too tight and hot, heart racing.

“Minutes” was the doctor’s reply, his eyes compassionate. The ventilator whooshed on, Brent’s chest rising and falling in a hypnotic, terrible rhythm.

Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, his voice an unrecognizable rasp. “I just—not quite yet. God, I can’t—not yet.”

“Take as much time as you need.” Dr. Bayless slipped silently out of the room.

The night passed slowly as Jeremy sat with Brent, not speaking, not able to, his words held at bay by the incessant beeping and frantic alarms that went off periodically, by the violent motions of Brent’s chest as air was forced into his lungs.

Finally in the darkest hour of the night, right before dawn, Dr. Bayless entered the room again quietly, not speaking, letting Jeremy take the lead.

“It’s time,” he forced out, his whole body starting to shake.

After that the room was a quiet flurry of activity as nurses came in and quickly, efficiently, removed the wires and leads from Brent’s chest, IV needles from his arms, pushing the machines off to the side. The ventilator whooshed on as Jeremy climbed into the narrow hospital bed and pulled his husband into his arms, tucking Brent’s bandaged head under his chin, holding him. A pair of gloved hands reached in and disconnected the ventilator hose from the small tube that led from Brent’s mouth into his lungs, and his heaving chest went still.

Shoes squeaked as people left the room and the lights were shut off, leaving them in blessed quiet and darkness. There was no dramatic beeping that slowed and stopped as the heart stopped beating, just Brent’s warmth in his arms as he slipped quietly away. Jeremy rocked him, the closeness and the quiet finally allowing him to speak.

“I’ll miss you, baby,” he whispered in Brent’s ear. “And I’ll take such good care of our son. He’ll know you; he’ll know how wonderful you were, how happy you made me every day. God, you made me so happy.”

Jeremy kissed the top of Brent’s bandaged head, running his hand up and down Brent’s back, memorizing the feel of the man he loved in his arms. He was so warm, so still, like he was sleeping, a deep, peaceful sleep. Jeremy closed his eyes, imagining they were home safe in their bed, impending fatherhood and their whole lives still stretching before them.

He kissed Brent’s head again, wishing he could bury his face in his thick blond hair, feel Brent’s lips moving sleepily against his neck as he whispered, “Love you, honey,” just one more time.

Jeremy held him close until he felt a presence beside the bed, and Dr. Bayless leaned in and pressed a stethoscope to Brent’s chest, listening for a minute. He rested his hand on Jeremy’s arm briefly in silent acknowledgment.

Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, wondering why he couldn’t cry.

THE NEXT
few days passed in a numb blur of funeral arrangements and phone calls where Jeremy spent most of his time saying comforting things to other people. Per Brent’s wishes he had him cremated, but he deviated from the living will when he had Brent’s ashes interred in a small, private cemetery instead of scattered over the ocean; he wanted a place to take their son to visit his father.

The plaque set into the memorial wall over the sealed compartment was small, so small there was only room for Brent’s name and the dates of his birth and death. After the short service, Jeremy leaned against the wall and traced the etched name over and over with his fingertip:
Brent Nicholas Speer
. When they’d gotten married, Brent insisted on taking Jeremy’s last name, a symbolic way of leaving a painful past behind. Brent’s relationship with his family had always been rocky, and when he finally came out to them his senior year in high school, they pretty much disowned him.

“You’re my family now,” Brent whispered on their wedding night, and when they returned from their short honeymoon, he set to work legally changing his name to Speer.

Jeremy was tired. He was so tired of the empty platitudes well-meaning people spouted, tired of trying to hold it together for everyone else when all he wanted to do was fall apart. Jase had been rock solid from the morning after Brent’s death until now, never far from his side, running interference when yet another person said, “It’s God’s will” or “He’s in a better place.”

Now Jeremy managed to say good-bye to the last of the small contingent of friends and colleagues who had shown up to pay their respects, and finally it was just him and Jase left alone in the small memorial garden. Jeremy traced Brent’s name one last time, unwilling to leave him, knowing it was time to face the rest of his life without the man he loved and wondering how the fuck he was going to manage that.

“Jesus, this sucks.” Jase’s low mutter was not meant for Jeremy’s ears, he knew, but somehow he heard it, amplified as it was by the echoing stone surrounding them. His eyes snapped to Jase’s, and suddenly Jeremy was laughing, a raw and rusty sound, a tinge of hysteria along the edges.

“It sucks so bad,” he agreed between gasps, “and that’s the most honest, heartfelt thing that anyone has said to me today. Thank you.”

Jase came over to him, concern in his eyes, and he wrapped his arm around Jeremy’s heaving shoulders. “Come on, bud. Let’s get you home.”

Home.
His house wasn’t a home without Brent in it. It was just a place where Brent used to be, kind of like Jeremy’s shattered heart. As they drove toward Jeremy’s neighborhood, Jeremy felt the cracks in his composure, opened by his unexpected laughter at the cemetery, start to spread, pain and grief seeping out, demanding to be acknowledged and recognized. Jeremy fought it, a trembling starting deep inside and spreading outward until his whole body was shaking with the force.