Drown #14: we go on, part 1

September 2086. Stephanie Nova and Justin Kim are 26. Cynthia Kim is 50, Robert Kim is 52. Keri Riley is 25. Alice Nova is 65. Willow is 5, Lily is 4. 


I don't want to hear it. This isn't happening. 

"Swelling on his brain due to repeated blows..."

Remember when we were kids, when we used to camp out behind my house in the summer?

"... induced the coma to give his brain a chance to rest..."

You said if we slept with our backs to each other we could see in all the directions and the monsters could never get us.


"... stable and responding well to the medications..."

I thought we were being careful. I thought we did everything right. I thought we were doing everything we could so that he couldn't get us. We tried so hard, and we finally lost. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. 

"... don’t think he'll need the surgery unless..."

You said, we go back forever, we go on forever. Nothing will ever change us. You said he could never take you away from me.   


"... monitor the swelling for a few days, as well as watch for seizures, stroke, or... "

You’re indestructible, you promised.



"We won’t know if there was any lasting damage until he’s more alert."

"What kind of lasting damage?" Robert asked.

"It’s always a possibility with head injuries. But we couldn't know yet. We’ll know more in a few days."

Stephanie tucked her face into the crevice between Justin's arm and his sleeping body. She closed her eyes to stop the tears, but they came anyway.

Justin's parents didn't come into the room when they finished talking with the doctor. They went out into the hallway together. Stephanie would let them have a turn with him alone, but not yet. She wasn't ready to leave him yet.


Stephanie felt a waft of air as the doctor walked past her. She opened her eyes and sat up.

"I'm sorry, do you need me to move?"

"No, you’re fine right there. You'll just want to be careful there with his ribs. That's the side his cracked ribs are on."

"Oh, no. Did I hurt him?"

"I don’t think he can feel anything right now."


She was scared to touch him anywhere now. He was broken all over. What kind of monster could do this to another person?

Dr. Booth showed her all the other places where Justin was broken and stitched back together. "He also has a fractured jaw, and the nose, which you can see. But none of those are critical injuries. Those will heal just fine." Not like his brain, the doctor didn't say. He just went back to his typing.

"Can I hold his hand?"

"Yes, that would be okay. Do you have any other questions?"


"I know he needs to sleep right now, but he’s going to wake up, right?"

"Almost certainly."

"But there’s a chance he won’t?"

"There’s always a small chance. Very small. There’s a bigger chance that he will wake up and that he’ll be just fine."

"Can he hear me?"

"Maybe. Why don’t you give it a shot? If he can hear, I bet he'd love to hear your voice."


Stephanie lifted Justin's pinky finger, it dropped back limp to the bed. She touched the tops of his fingers, his knuckles that were dotted with scrapes. It reassured her that his skin was hot instead of cold. Warm and alive. Then it worried her that his skin was too hot, feverish, as his body ramped up for the insurmountable feat of healing it had to do.

He shouldn’t be here. It wasn’t fair. He was just taking Willow to visitation. He was only doing what she asked of him.

In the hallways, Cynthia seemed to look at Stephanie differently now. Stephanie imagined what she must be thinking, things she was too polite to say out loud. Look at what you did to my only boy, look at him because of you.   

Stephanie had made a terrible mistake. She shouldn’t have asked him to go. She knew the stories of what Jeremiah had done to Bella's boyfriends, she knew the stories and she sent him anyway.

These terrible wounds might as well have been at her own hand.


When the doctors and nurses and his parents and everyone else had gone, Stephanie sobbed out loud.



"I’m so sorry. It’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have asked you to do it. I should have sent someone else, anyone but you. And he would have…"


Stephanie tried to think of how it could be different. If not Justin, who would it have been instead? Her elderly father? Her mother? Willow?


"I should have gone myself," she decided. "It would have been fine. He might have hit me, but I could take it. He never hit me that hard. It barely hurt. It never even left a mark. He wouldn't have hit me like he hit you. I would have gotten over it, but what if you don’t get over this? It was my fault that I married him and it should have been me instead."


The deep sorrow in Stephanie’s heart turned ugly and cold.

Jeremiah was still out there. Waiting, maybe. She didn’t even know where. He could be waiting outside this hospital for all she knew. He wanted to punish her for how she wronged him. He took the most special person in her life and snapped him like a twig. Just for spite.


"I hate him. I wish I told him the truth while he was still at war, that I never loved him. I didn't love him when I married him, I didn't love him when he left for the war, and now I hate him. I wish he was dead. I wish he never came back from that war. I wish that he died out there in space. I wish the aliens exploded him into specks of dust, so they could never bring his body back, so they could never ask me to bury him. I don't want to bury him, he doesn't deserve it. I wish he died alone."

Stephanie had never wished anybody dead before in her whole life. Now she had. 

And that made her cry some more.

—

"We never took him to GeekCon when he was a kid," Cynthia said. "Don't you remember how he'd beg each summer? But it was in California and we didn't have the money for a trip that big. And even if we could, you couldn't get that much time off."


"Maybe we'll take him now," Robert said. "As soon as he gets better. If he's not too old to go to GeekCon with his folks."

"But now he's the one with the busy job and a mortgage and three kids."

"Then we'll take everybody."

—

Why are you here, Keri? She wondered to herself whether this was appropriate. At the front desk, she had to declare what relation she was to him. "Ex-wife," Keri said.

The desk attendant raised an eyebrow and quipped, "Do you come in peace?"

"Yes, I do," Keri said.

Why was she here? Because she still loved Justin—she would always love him in her stubborn and inadequate way. Because she finally forgave Stephanie, honestly and truly. Because, whether they liked it or not, they were family to her. Because some day she wouldn’t be able to be here, but right now she could.


Keri didn't take offense that Stephanie was surprised to see her. "You came?"

"Well, yeah. I mean… I just have all these vacation days that I never use and we’re allowed emergency family leave. I thought you might need some help with the girls or the baby or something."

Stephanie looked like the personification of despair.

"Jesus, Steph, when was the last time you slept?"

"I don't know."

"He's gonna be fine.


Stephanie held Keri's hand, which was too squishy and tender for Keri's tastes, but she let Stephanie hold her hand for as long as she wanted.

"Go on, go take a nap," Keri told her. "I’ll sit with him for a while."


"Hey, there, brawler. Wow, you look like shit."

She tried to think of something nicer to follow up with, but she didn't know exactly what she wanted to say. She had many complicated feelings and thoughts in her head. Some felt serious and weighty. Others felt stupid and petty. In the end, she just stared at him and hoped that he hadn't heard her at all.





Until her father joined them, carrying a sandwich. She was glad to have an excuse not to say anything important.

"You know, the bacon here isn’t bacon. It’s tofu. It’s terrible," Bryson said.

"You’re not supposed to have bacon anyway, Dad. Your cholesterol."

—

Days went by, and Justin was still the same. Which was better than taking a bad turn, of course.


Stephanie thought that it must be so boring to sleep for days and days. She didn’t feel like she’d been the best company lately, either. She would be more positive, she decided. She would sing him a song.


♫ "When I get older losing my hair,"

♫ "Many years from now."

♫ "Will you still be sending me a Valentine,"

♫ "Birthday greetings, bottle of wine?"


♫ "If I'd been out till quarter to three,"

♫ "Would you lock the door?"


♫ "Will you still need me, will you still feed me,"


♫ "When I'm sixty-four?"

Stephanie stopped singing.


What a dumb song to choose. She was struck with horror of that lingering small chance they might never get to be sixty-four together.

Or that if they did, it might not be what they planned. Would he be paralyzed? Would he have brain damage? Could he work? Would he remember who she was? Would he forget who he was? Would he forget their kids? His personality could change, their relationship could change, their sex life could change, everything could change.

She thought it might be a bad idea, but she browsed online earlier about the "lasting damages" of head injuries and came up with a list about three pages long, and everything she learned was terrible, awful, horrifying. She tried to consider what damages they could live with and she didn't want any of them.


That was when her mother came in. "The girls keep begging to see him and the baby is starting to fuss. How are you doing, sweetheart?"

"I’m fine," Stephanie said as a tear rolled down her cheek.


"Oh, let me give the baby a bottle."

"No, I’ll feed him. My milk might dry up. He already had too many bottles when he was born. I think my milk is already drying up. I don’t know if he’s gaining enough weight. My milk will dry up and he’ll starve to death."

"No, dear, he looks very healthy. Those chubby little legs. I think he’s getting plenty of milk. How about we take the kids home? The waiting room of a hospital is no place for a newborn."

The baby was the least bothered by the waiting room, as long as he was held and fed and changed, he was content. It was the girls who were restless and frustrated and scared. Stephanie didn’t know what to do.

Justin would know what to do.


"It looks bad though. If I brought them in here, if they saw him like this, do you think it would scar them for life?"

Alice looked at Justin's mangled face and sighed. "Well, Willow, the poor darling, she had to see it happen."

"I know, I'm sorry," Stephanie said.


"Hey, Steph," Keri said, bursting into the room. "I taught the girls to play poker for money, is that okay?"

Stephanie couldn't think about poker, or whether or not she wanted her daughters to play it. When the door opened and closed behind Keri, Stephanie heard her baby crying all the way from the waiting room. The very distinct cry of her very individual Benji. Her milk let down and seeped through her nursing bra and shirt.


"Your boobs are leaking," Keri said.

"See, sweetheart, you have plenty of milk," Alice said.

Stephanie went to feed the baby.


Keri was left alone with Justin again, and the weighty feeling that she had something to say to him.


"Okay, so I never used to tell you that I loved you enough. Or at all. I should have been nicer to you. I did love you. I mean, I still do for whatever that's worth. And I'm sorry. Okay? I’m sorry."

—

Justin would know what to do, but Stephanie never trusted her own judgement and she never knew if what she was doing was right or wrong. But the girls wanted to see him. They wanted to see that he was still alive.

When they saw him sleeping so very deeply, they thought he looked dead.


"Come here, come closer," Stephanie said. She pulled the girls closer. Lily scrambled onto her lap first, so she just pulled Willow in with her arm.

"Look, Willow, open your eyes and look. You can see he's breathing."


Willow wouldn't look. She was still crying.

"Lily, here, feel his hand. It's warm."

"I want my daddy to wake up now," Lily said.

"Me, too, little girlie. But he needs to rest so he can get better."

Maybe it wasn't her job as a mom to explain the science, the chances, the risks. Her job as their mom was to take her tiny, weak, imperfect grain of hope—all that she had—and let it grow in their hearts because it was what they needed. Even if she was unsure. Even if she couldn't know.


"But it's okay if he sleeps," Stephanie said. "Because look, that line there shows his heartbeat. And that line means he’s breathing. That number tells us how much oxygen he has."

"Does he have enough oxygen?"

"Yes, I think so. And that number tells us how much pressure his blood is making in his veins."

"Is it a good pressure?"

"I think so. Not too low, not too high. That's how we know he’s alive. Very alive."


"Okay," the girls both said.

Now she just needed him to wake up and be fine, so she wouldn't become a liar in her children's eyes. She wanted to hope that she'd decided something right on her own for once in her life.

—

footnotes: when she wouldn't tell Jeremiah that she didn't love him // ← also, those pictures! ❤️️ ← also, hindsight is a bitch

gameplay notes on pixel milk drying up