“I was supposed to make him meat loaf,” I choke out before the man marks some things on his chart and slides it loudly into the plastic slot at the foot of Papa’s bed.
The doctor continues, oblivious to my meltdown. “We’ll keep an eye on his vitals and move him to avoid bedsores, but I have to be honest because it’s my job. There are some hard decisions in your future. For instance, you may have nurses asking you about a DNR and you may want to consider signing it.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
“A DNR is a Do Not Resuscitate order. If you sign it, they’ll place a purple bracelet on him and a note in his chart so that should he go into cardiac arrest—as many patients in this condition do—they won’t put his body through the trauma of trying to bring him back. We’ll simply let him go.”
We’ll simply let him go. The words ring out in my mind as if he’d shouted them, when in reality he’s barely speaking above a whisper.
“I was supposed to make him meat loaf,” I say again, because I am stuck now, like a broken record with a hitch on the last conversation we had.
“Yes, well, I’ll let you speak with your family and if you or your brother have any questions, I’ll come by again tomorrow during morning rounds.” Another weary attempt at a smile and the universal head tilt of sympathy and he’s gone, leaving me alone to try to remember everything he just said and how to relay it to Dallas.
“I’m sorry,” Gavin says, startling me because I thought everyone was asleep.
“Not your fault,” I say, lowering myself into the chair I was practically becoming one with before the doctor came in.
“Get some sleep now, Bluebird. I heard enough to get the gist. I’ll explain it to Dallas when he wakes up.”
A tiny hopeful part of my brain, one that still believes in happily ever after despite a lifetime’s worth of evidence to the contrary, tells me that I’m already asleep. That this is a horrible nightmare I’m having and when I wake up, this will have all been my mind playing tricks on me and Papa is fine. So I let that part push me over the edge into unconsciousness where everything is okay.
Morning,” I hear someone say as I blink myself awake.
My attempt at returning the sentiment comes out muffled. Sunlight streams into a gray room with a white bed. An empty white bed.
“Where is he?” I’d stand but my legs are cramped and sore from being tucked beneath me.
“They took him down for some tests,” Dallas informs me. He looks as exhausted as I feel.
Gavin’s chair is empty. “Where’s—”
“I sent him to the house to check on things. I told him to man the fort and we’d call if we needed anything.”
I nod and attempt to swallow the desert that has taken up residence in my mouth.
“A neurologist whose name I couldn’t pronounce came in this morning. He told me what Gavin said the doctor told you yesterday, about the EEG.”
I see it, the severity of these results, in my brother’s slumped shoulders and slightly bowed head, but I’m not ready to discuss it.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Nearly sixteen hours. Dixie, you were past exhaustion. I know our schedule has been rough lately and maybe I’ve been pushing too hard. I was—”
“Stop. I’m fine. Tell me what else the doctor said. Anything new?”
Dallas leans forward in his chair, angling closer to me and giving me the same look Dr. Paulsen did. “Dix, I know this is hard and believe me, if anyone knows what a fighter Papa is, it’s me. But I think we need to discuss—”
“You want to sign the DNR,” I say, cutting him off because I knew he would think that was best the moment the doctor mentioned it.