Would You Rather

21 - WYR: Colton or Fidan?

tw: mention of traumatic brain injury

FINLEY

When I was fifteen, my sister, then twelve, fell off the back of one of the farm tractors and suffered a traumatic brain injury. It didn't seem that bad, initially. We took her to Weyburn General Hospital and Brodie agreed to look after the twins and I that night to let my parents stay with her.

We woke the next morning to the news that our parents were in Saskatoon. Almost four hours north of us, scared that Danielle wouldn't make the day.

See, there's a funny quirk about brain injuries. It's not like a broken bone where you can zap it with an x-ray and figure out exactly what's wrong and exactly how to fix it. No. Brain injuries are so devastatingly unique that there's almost no way to tell. Someone with severe axon stripping, the most deadly form of brain injury, could make a better recovery than someone with just a concussion. Someone with a TBI could swing from one end of the severity scale to the other in a matter of hours. Someone injured in the exact same way to the exact same depth as someone else could make half the recovery.

Dani didn't get lucky. Dani isn't the story about the guy who got into a car crash in his freshman year of college and despite being comatose, could come back in three years, fully able to walk again. Dani isn't the story about the athlete whose progress is 'monumental'. She isn't someone the news would tout as a fighter despite how goddamn hard she's fought. We've fought.

Despite the fact that everyone knows that brain injuries change drastically, all the time, there's an underlying knowledge within the Shaw household that Dani, despite our hardest effort, likely will never walk without braces again. Will never speak normally again. Will never sing for us again.

There's always a chance, and we all cling to it. She's eighteen. That's far before our best estimates of the end of brain development. She's eighteen and six months ago she could hold a cup for the first time. She's eighteen and there's... there's always a shot.

I've kept my hair at the same length since she got injured. So has everyone else. Brodie shaves his beard every time he comes back. I don't wear make-up near her because the one time I did, she had a hard time putting a name to my face.

I ushered Fidan off when he dropped me back home after skating. My mom's car was back in the driveway and it's not that I don't think he'd understand. I think he might. It's that I don't want him to know. I need to keep him that arms length away. Nat hasn't even been into my house. Nat hasn't been, Darius has only been to the end of my kilometer-long driveway, and I let Fidan Koskinen into my kitchen. I let Fidan into a space full of my mother's bread and photographs of me as a kid. He's already too close. He's already far too close.

"How was skating?" Mom asks when I push open the door, my gear slung over my shoulder. "And take that stuff to the basement with your brothers'."

"Will do," I look over her shoulder at what she's making. A batch of mashed potatoes, it looks like. "And skating was good."

"Mark mentioned you brought along a boy?" She's got a teasing lilt in her voice but I shut it down with a tense smile.

"I did. Fidan's a friend of mine who was able to drive me down."

She points her spatula at me. "I heard he has an interesting job?"

I just laugh, shaking my head. "I'll convince you he's not my future husband in just a minute, let me dump my stuff downstairs and grab a quick shower."

I ease down the stairs into our cellar. It's stone-walled and there's a series of shelves on one side that hold some of my dad's tools mixed carefully with canned goods. It's a tornado shelter, a hockey-gear storage room, a place we've kept old wheelchairs, old harnesses.