Jodee

Chapter 49 - First Night

I have been sitting in the exact same position for over four hours.

My brother is unmoving.

Caleb paces around the room, sits down, gets up and paces. Takes phone calls and works on his computer. He is always moving.

I, however, am not. I sit in the chair at Ace's bedside and I hold his hand and watch his sleeping form — as if my brain has some fantasy that if I watch close enough I can tell if he's going to wake up or not. Even though I know and have been told by many people that it is extremely unlikely for my brother to wake up in the next 48 hours. More likely that he'll die than that he'll wake up.

A nurse has come into the room twice so far. She tries to make small talk with me and updates Cal on our brother's progress as she scribbles away on the clipboard his vitals and such. This is the only time I drop Ace's hand, and only so she can do her job before I quickly retake his hand in mine.

The last time she came in — about an hour ago — she had to redo the bandage around his chest wound. I, naturally, wanted to see what kinda scar Ace was going to be left with. But in the end I regretted my decision on looking. The scar was clean, but very long with lots of stitches in it. There is slightly bruising around that, but the nurse said that's to be expected. I was glad when she bandaged it up and redid his gown so the nasty scar was hidden.

I wanted to ask the nurse if she thinks the scar will be super prominent, but I got too scared to speak up. The good thing is, I don't think my brother will mind if the scar is big — he'll probably think he's super cool or something like that.

Caleb has a pretty big scar — maybe five inches — on the left side of his stomach that is pretty easy to see if his shirt is off — and he loves it. Caleb thinks he's super cool whenever he shows off his scar — which is a lot — and every time Ace laughs and agrees that he's "badass" which just feeds Cal's ego even more. But for some reason he refuses to tell me how he got the scar and Ace won't say anything either. I think it's weird, but I've kinda given up pushing them.

I have a couple scars from falling off of the playground or falling into a rose bush while riding my bike. But the difference is; I don't like my scars. So, I just try to ignore them.

My brother has a pretty good amount of scars all over his body. Most of them from our amazing father but also from him getting into trouble as a teen with Caleb. Ace doesn't mind his scars either, there's only a few which he'll never talk about, but most he doesn't mind telling the stories on how he gets them.

I wonder if he'll tell me this story or keep it a secret?

"C'mon, JD, time to go." I hear Caleb's voice after he stands up, stretching his arms and legs around from typing on his computer.

I ignored him.

"I know you heard me, Jodee Fay."

I sighed, turning to look at my brother's best friend, but not removing my hand from Ace's. "I'm not leaving, Cal."

"Visiting hours are over, Jodee." He threw in my name at the last second, pinning me with a glare for my disrespectful tone.

"I heard that you can stay as long as you want for ICU patients." I shot back — I never heard that, I was just making it up.

"That's—" Cal looked away, trying to hide his laugh as he figured out pretty quickly I was just bullshitting him. "Alright, Jodee." He sighed, running a hand through his hair. "That might be true, but I am saying we have to leave. It's 8pm, you haven't eaten since we got here and it's time to go home — you have school in the morning." Caleb's voice turned very stern.