Requiem [COMPLETED]

Lost Cause

[TRIGGER WARNING: SUICIDE]

As I'd stood mutely under his broken hangman's noose, Sven had been carried off in a wailing vessel like the professional mourners of roman funerals, paid to gnash their teeth and pull at their hair and beat their breasts as they cry after the pallbearers down to the cemetery. Except they didn't condemn him straight into earth, but carried him like dutiful public servants to the hospital (while one of them stayed in the back, pushing and pumping his heart artificially), where doctors would dutifully continue to try and resuscitate him. Lazarus without the benefit of a holy martyr seeking to work miracles, a bunch of priests of Baal singing hymns and trying to massage his heart into waking, that was what I thought of as I lay bereft of sleep and tears.

That night I had stayed on his bed, curled in a ball. Grandpa had told me to go to my room. When I silently refused, he seemed to realize that it was one command I would never forgive him for and he uncharacteristically gave in. He pulled down the rope so that I wouldn't have it garishly hanging over me. Or maybe he worried that I'd be tempted too. I awoke from my staring stupor to pale January sunlight seeping in, giving his small room a chapel atmosphere with cold drafts sinking from the window fitfully disturbing papers on his desk. I'd thought for a second Sven was there, rifling around, looking for something.

I knew nothing at first, and because grandpa didn't say anything more I assumed he was dead. I scared grandpa with my constant crying. Crying gave no relief but seemed to feed on itself, snowballing. I'm an angry crier, always have been; so it did nothing to ease other emotions welling up.

A few days later the phone rang when grandpa was down collecting the mail at the end of our quarter-mile drive, and I hesitantly picked up. The phone had been ringing a lot the last few days, as our little town became aware of what had happened, of why Sven and I weren't in school. It was the hospital in Fargo. They said they had results from the CAT scan: Sven had permanent brain damage. He had come out of his original coma, but they were keeping him sedated in a medically induced coma because he wasn't breathing well on his own due to the bruising and they were still working on dissipating the built up pressure on his brain. Aren't they both comas then? What's the difference? I wondered.

They weren't entirely sure of the extent of the damage, but the reptilian part of the human brain, the part that controls breathing, heartbeat, and other vital functions appeared to be miraculously unmarred by the lack of oxygen he had experienced. He'd had extensive damage to one frontal lobe--concussive--and lots of pressure on his brain from swelling and blood pooling. They'd drilled through his skull to relieve it and were waiting to see what other damage had already occurred.

He had experienced lack of oxygen? Doctors have such a careful way of stepping around the difficulty in such situations. They removed all action, all responsibility, as if they would offend by attributing the consequences to any specific person: innocent of agency. How odd.

I felt like I could breathe again, even though the thread of hope was tenuous. I came alive again, to an extent. I realized now it made sense, why they'd turned on the sirens again, belatedly. I'd been in shock then and hadn't even noticed that it was odd if they were just carting a dead body. They must have loaded him up and then been shocked that his body responded finally to CPR and thought, "Oh, shit," and rushed off trying to save him.

That was the only fact I had at my disposal for weeks. Grandpa never shared any new information, what tests Sven was undergoing, how he was improving--or not--and I dared not ask. What if I heard something bad? And what good could have come out of knowing the worst? I was afraid, because knowing an absolute truth, hearing the words "insurmountable brain damage" or "Disabled" or "Death" would mean that the world would irrevocably change. Grandpa must have known I'd somehow gleaned some information, as my endless weeping stopped, though the numb fogginess continued. Living in his room was the closest I could get to Sven. Feeling the anticipation, the vibration of that taut line of hope stretched between Sven's body breathing and my own made the uncertainty bearable.