For Mac (3 page)

“Mac?” Branson was still in shock. “He never….”

“Maybe not. Maybe your dad thought he saw something that wasn’t there. Maybe it was there, and Mac’s blocked it out. Maybe it was your father who had those feelings and didn’t want to. Maybe it was how
his
father approached ‘the talk.’ Maybe he knew someone who was beaten up or killed for being gay. Who knows?” Andy tried to explain. “It doesn’t matter anymore how or why it started, but that reaction from a man your brother idolized was enough to make Mac homophobic in the extreme, and when it fell to him to give you your talk, he included that idea.”

“Well,” Branson sighed, “at least he didn’t add the pictures and hitting part… not at the time of ‘the talk’ anyway.”

Branson looked at the floor, apparently suddenly ashamed, and Andy picked up the conversation. “He told me about when he found you with Amy’s magazine. He hated himself for that reaction, but he felt he was justified at the time because he was trying to save you hardship in the long run.”

“Trying to save me ‘hardship’? Or just trying to ‘save’ me?” Branson spat out heatedly.

“Both, I guess,” Andy confirmed. “But mainly, he was trying to keep you with him. Social Services was breathing down his neck over the slightest, imagined misstep on his part. He figured if he ‘let you go gay,’ they would take you from him for sure.”

“Social Services?”

“Yeah,” Andy continued. “Remember when you fell out of the tree in Amy’s backyard?”

“Yeah,” Branson answered slowly, obviously not knowing yet how this pertained to their current conversation. “I broke my arm—” He looked at his right arm. “—the same arm, actually… and got banged up pretty good. I think I hit about every branch on the way down.”

Andy nodded. “The hospital called Child Protective Services. They tried to make a case that it wasn’t an accident. That Mac had beaten you.”

“Well, he did a couple of times, but not
that
time. And never bad enough to break bones,” Bran answered. “Why would they think that?”

“I don’t know. Trying to be protective of a child they thought was being raised by little more than another child? It doesn’t matter. The only reason they didn’t take you away right then was that Amy told them what had happened, and her mom could vouch for the fact that you arrived at her house without bruises and came in from the backyard with the beginnings of them, and Mac was at work.”

“So he thought it would be a good idea to beat the crap out of me so I wouldn’t be gay, so they wouldn’t take me away because they thought he beat the crap out of me?” Branson said with a fair amount of sarcasm. “How does that make any sense?”

Andy chuckled, though there was nothing funny in the situation. “He truly was little more than a kid trying to raise a teen who had lost both his parents. He was doing the best he could. He’s admitted to me several times that he didn’t think he handled much of anything the right way, but—”

“He never admitted it to me.”

“Yeah, well, it’s Mac we’re talking about. ‘I’m sorry’ or ‘I was wrong’ isn’t really in his vocabulary, so….”

“Yeah, I guess,” Branson had to admit. “He didn’t do so bad, given the circumstances. I mean, you know, he could have done worse. He was all but raising me by himself even before our folks died. That’s an awful lot to ask of someone that young, I guess.”

They fell silent again for a long while, but Andy felt that he had given Branson at least some explanation for Mac’s behavior. Not that it made it all right, but still it seemed to have brought Branson a little peace, at least temporarily. That was all Andy could do for either brother right now.

Branson

I
T
WAS
another couple of days before Branson was strong enough to sit up, so he couldn’t be at Mac’s bedside during that time, which was where he wanted to be, but Andy and Amy kept him posted on his brother’s condition. Even Amy’s mom came by a couple of times to check on both brothers.

Mac had had several more petit mal seizures and one grand mal. That one had had the doctors worried for a while. They were fiddling with his anticonvulsant medications almost continuously to try to control the seizures that the doctors told Bran could each be causing even more brain damage. Branson knew he needed to get to his brother’s side as soon as he could. He couldn’t stand getting these kinds of reports secondhand, not that he’d like them firsthand either.

Practically as soon as the nurse informed him they were going to get him to sit in a chair for a while that day, he asked if it could be in a wheelchair so that he could go visit his brother. After a consultation with both his doctor and Mac’s, it was arranged to have one of the orderlies take him to the ICU, with instructions to stay nearby and to bring him back after precisely ten minutes of visiting.

So Branson sat by his brother’s bed and took in the sight. Mac was so pale. He was breathing on his own but had an oxygen cannula in his nose. His head was covered in bandages, and Bran’s mind must have been so overcome with all the details that it latched on to one tiny detail that was lacking.

The two brothers had never had the vaguest family resemblance. Mac was six feet three, with straight dark hair and light brown eyes, whereas Bran was a good three inches shorter, with curly blond hair and blue eyes. But one thing they did have in common was the fact that no matter how short they cut it or how much they styled it, they each had one lock of hair that simply insisted on falling down onto their forehead. Branson couldn’t get over how wrong it seemed that that lock was missing on Mac’s forehead now.

After what Branson had no doubt was ten minutes to the second, the orderly came back in and told him it was time to go back to his room. Branson squeezed Mac’s hand and told him he would be back when he could, but no matter how much he wanted to, he didn’t believe that his brother had heard him.

E
VERY
DAY
of the next week found Branson by his brother’s bed for as long as the staff would allow.

“You know, sugar,” the nurse with the Southern accent Branson had met early on said as she helped him get back into bed after vising Mac, “it’s not good for you to spend all your time in ICU. You need time to heal yourself instead of worrying about your brother all the time.”

“I appreciate your concern, Laney,” Branson responded. “But he’s all I have. I can’t go on without him. I really can’t. And if staying by his bedside does any good at all, then that’s where I’m going to be.”

Laney pulled a chair up to the side of the bed, where Branson was now snuggled under a cover. “But does it do him any good, baby?” She held his hand in hers, trying to lessen the bite of those words. “I’m afraid for you. You’re not healing as quickly as you should, and I can’t imagine that doesn’t have something to do with the fact that you are constantly sitting by your brother’s bed, or, in the rare moments you’re not, you’re here wanting to be at his bedside.”

Branson shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do about that. I can’t help worrying, and I would worry more if I couldn’t be with him. Even if being there doesn’t do him any good,
I
need to be there. It does
me
some good.”

Laney could apparently see she wasn’t getting anywhere, so she patted his hand.

“Take it easy sweetie. I’ll be back to check on you in a while.” And with that she left him alone with his thoughts.

O
NCE
B
RANSON
was released from the hospital, the staff didn’t have as much to say about how often he visited Mac, so he was in his brother’s room as often as visiting hours in ICU allowed.

Andy spent time with both brothers and was there every single time Branson tried not to cry, and a few times he actually did. Amy cradled him in her arms more often than not when she visited and tried to tell him that it would somehow be okay. Bran could tell she didn’t believe it, though. She was a nurse and worked in the ER, so she had seen this type of injury before, and she didn’t need to comment for Bran to know that those cases hardly ever turned out “okay.”

Mac had had another particularly scary grand mal seizure while Branson sat beside him one Friday. At first, Branson thought that Mac was moving around, trying to wake up. There were little twitches in his hands and feet, but it was soon obvious that that wasn’t the case. His entire body started lurching out of control. The room filled up almost immediately. Branson was pushed into the hallway while the medical staff tended to Mac.

They had gotten the seizure under control, and there hadn’t been another major seizure the rest of the weekend, but there hadn’t been much improvement in Mac’s overall condition either. By that Sunday, the drainage tube had been removed from his head, and the bandages were gone, but Mac was still in a coma and completely unresponsive. Bran was pretty sure that Mac’s chances of waking up and being fine were going down each day he stayed that way.

O
NCE
M
AC
was moved out of ICU on Wednesday of the following week, Branson practically camped out beside his brother’s bed. He had taken sick leave from work and would eventually, sometime soon, start working from Mac’s bedside. That was one perk of working at an advertising agency. He could do his work almost anywhere and fax or e-mail it to the company as needed. They were quite understanding about the situation and Branson counted himself lucky that he worked with an organization that was able to, and cared enough to, give him this leeway.

Tom Evans was a man in his early sixties who ran the company more like a family. He was on a first-name basis with every one of the employees and knew about their children, parents, siblings, even pets. He’d seen Mac a couple of times when Mac had stopped in to see Branson for lunch or to pick him up after work. But he’d actually met Mac last year when Mac went with Branson to the company Christmas party. Tom had greeted him warmly.

“Mac, isn’t it?” Tom had approached Branson and his brother almost as soon as they entered Tom’s house for the party.

“Yes, sir,” Mac answered, always polite to his elders.

“I’m so glad you could come, son.”

“Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to meeting the people Bran works with.”

“Oh, we’re a pretty eclectic bunch, but most of the ones here tonight won’t bite… much.” Tom had laughed at his own joke and left Mac and Branson to mingle. Mac wasn’t nearly the people person that Branson was. Where Branson was outgoing and charismatic, Mac was quiet and taciturn. He made friends, but it took a while. Branson had never met a stranger and could be friendly with everyone, but he could count his close friends on one hand.

While no one at Branson’s work became Mac’s best friend, they all knew him, or at least of him, and when Branson had called Tom to ask for time off, Tom had passed along everyone’s well wishes for Mac’s full recovery. Branson had never been much of a praying man, but Tom was, so Branson was touched when Tom said he’d pray for Mac. Truth be told, Branson had done some praying himself since the accident; even though he wasn’t sure it did any good. It made him feel like he was doing something, though, so he kept doing it.

M
AC
HAD
good days and bad. He had days when nothing seemed to happen and days when he had wicked seizures, sometimes more than one grand mal and many petit mal all in the same day. He had stopped breathing during some of them, and that had scared Branson to no end, but the staff always got him started again. There was talk about having to intubate him if he stopped breathing and wouldn’t start again. They assured him it wasn’t that unusual for people in a coma to eventually need a ventilator, but Branson couldn’t help but think that would be a step backward. He didn’t want to see that happen.

Another problem with all the seizures, though, was that each one had the potential to damage more of his brain. Bran couldn’t stand to think about that either.

B
RANSON
WAS
sitting beside Mac’s bed, looking at some preliminary advertising campaigns, when something—he would never be able to say what, exactly—made him look up. He was thrilled with what he saw.

“Mac?” Branson squeaked. It had been forever since he’d seen those brown eyes. “Hey, bro. Did you decide to wake up?”

Mac didn’t seem to react to that, though. He stared straight ahead. He didn’t seem to see Branson, or hear him. It was like he was still asleep; he simply had his eyes open.

Branson pressed the nurse’s call button anyway. Any change like this was good; it had to be. The nurses came in and tried to talk to Mac. He alternated having his eyes open and closed every couple of minutes it seemed, but they were open long enough for the nurses to witness it too. They tried to get him to squeeze their hand or look at them, but he did neither. They squeezed his fingers—hard—trying to get him to respond to pain, but he didn’t. They ran a knuckle up and down his breastbone, vigorously. Still no response.

The nurses had contacted the doctor right away, of course, but it seemed like hours later before he actually came into the room. He did much the same thing that the nurses had done, with no better results. It seemed like the only improvement Mac had made was that now he was sometimes oblivious with his eyes open. Branson hated to think of it that way, but he was so disappointed. He had thought his brother was coming back to him. He had thought Mac was finally waking up, and they could go back to the way things were before.

F
OUR
DAYS
later was Christmas day, and Andy, Amy, Amy’s mom, and Branson sat quietly in Mac’s room and wished each other a Merry Christmas while they wished and prayed that Mac would wake up. The scene was the same almost a week later when they wished each other a Happy New Year before they were kicked out of Mac’s room at 8:00 p.m.