Let Go

Costa Rica, the night of February 9th

The Costa Rician night was humid, unbearable. Sweat beads dripped down my back past the fabric of Jeremy’s baggy jersey. Brian was beside me, holding my hand. His palms shook with anticipation for our entry, to see him. But myself, I was emotionless, just dead inside. Nothing flowed, even the blood in my veins ceased to move. The shock was wearing off as I gazed into the lit windows of the hospital. One of those was Jeremy, and I needed to know which.

The entry was bustling with bodies and jumbled Spanish. Words of joy, of sorrow. Birth and death, loss of limb and gain of heart. I heard only pieces, each a separate story, finishing as soon as it had begun.

We reached the counter, pure white like everything else I had laid my eyes on. I asked for Jeremy, words slipping from my lips in a foreign tongue. Brian’s eyes shifted to me, watching in wonder as I conversed back and forth towards the woman at the front desk. I’m sure she knew English, but I had no want to speak it. I wanted to become a story, just like the ones I had heard before. I wanted some sort of comfort, I wanted to feel in place, even for a few moments.

“What did you ask her?” Brian questioned, cocking his head awkwardly.

“Just that I wanted to see Jeremy Lusk. Get your ID out, she needs to run the visitor list.”

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish.” He mumbled, pulling the plastic identification card from his wallet and handing it over to the counter.

“I spent two semesters at sea here and raced their Supercross circuit. How else do you think I got the nickname Gasolina?” I replied, cracking a small smile.

It had been so long since I felt a grin, or at least that’s how it felt. The warmness of my muscles, the same way Twitch had made me feel. I wished it could come as easy as it just had. But, reality set in on my system, and the pounding in my skull returned as agonizing as it had been before.

Our identification was cleared and confirmed as another nurse came to direct us. Together we walked, headed bowed as if we were dressed in black, following in a funeral march. We passed through the chrome elevator doors and began our rise to the top of the building. A tag marked the floor that had been illuminated, cuidados intensivos.

Brian caught my glance, staring also at the risen words pasted across the metal.

“What does that mean Ricci?”

“Intensive Care.” I muttered, stomach dropping, guts churning.

Quietly, a bell run out across the locker we had found ourselves inside. The two doors slid open and revealed yet another white wall. I could almost see the blood stains that had been painted over, scrubbed off. The same stains I had left on my own walls, dried into the paint of my new home.

“And when I get home, I’ll throw you a house warming party. How bout‘ it kid?”

I shook the words from my head as we traveled down the corridors. I would catch glance at patients through the cream curtains of their rooms. Shadows, laced with tubing and wires. Motionless, alone, almost as if they were awaiting death. I couldn’t think about that, these people were survivors, not sadistic statistics of life.

The nurse turned to us in front of room 612. With a sweeping jester, she offered us inside, which in turn we excepted. My first step was the worst, stopping me dead in my tracks as if there were a brick wall in front of me. The energy of the room was deafening, so horrendous, no sane person would step inside. Brian felt it as well, inhaling heavily before his footsteps broke the mechanical white noise inside.

My eyes jetted towards the bed. There Jeremy lay, eyes shut, a tube shoved down his throat. His head was wrapped in a white bandage from surgery. Slowly, I approached him, double taking at his figure. I circled the bed, acting as if he were a crime scene or a horrendous conjure of my imagination. Our mother was crying at the foot of his bed, deep gulps erupting from her throat. Her face was dry, only because all her tears had been used in the hours before my arrival. My father’s arm was wrapped around her shoulder. We locked eyes, and he simply nodded, returning his glance to Jeremy.

“Go see him.” He seemed to say, without any words.

And so, I did, almost floating over the floor to his bedside. I cradled his head, leaning against the white, bleached sheets. His eyes were set back, the chocolate browns behind black, bruised lids. This wasn't Jeremy, no not at all. What lay before me was a stack of flesh on bone. No soul resided, housed within the protection of his heart. It had departed long before this moment, before we received the news. He was a frame, a cadaver, not a human. Not my brother.

I wanted to plead, grab towards the heavens if I might grasp his soul and pull it back. I wanted to scream, oh god I wanted to. I would travel my voice so far that the lord could hear my cries, my sobs, my distress. Take me, bring him back! Give the world someone who touched lives, and take one the world knew nothing about!

The only sounds echoing off the walls were rhythmic pulses, mechanical and drone. I remembered the sound of his heart from all the times I had fallen asleep against his chest as a child, knowing I would always be safe as long as the drum inside him marched along. I knew the sound, and what I heard was far from it.

But, what after? I never had thought such as I laid silently against him. What happens once the drum stops rolling? Who will be there to protect, and what will become of the protector? That never comes to mind at age twenty-four, not for anyone. You don't die at twenty-four, you just don't.

Tears began to run down my cheeks, some falling to the vexing where they disappeared into the fabric. Others made their thin lines down his cheeks as well. Almost as if he were crying himself, as if he were trapped in this body, paralyzed.

But, he couldn't cry, he wouldn't. I had never seen Jeremy cry, not once. He was strong, he had to be, for me. All the times he had held me through my sorrow, my strife. Now
It was I who held him through his darkest hour.

"Jeremy..." I whispered, brushing his eyelids softly with the pad of my finger.

I hoped it would wake him up. That his eyes would flutter open and he would proceed to bitch at me about how important sleep was to him. But, his eyes remained sealed, motionless, un-living. It's as it he had slipped into an endless slumber, and he wasn’t coming back for centuries.

"Whose going to see me off at my wedding? You told me you would, you promised."

I stayed by his side as the other arrived, my fingers stroking the soft skin of his cheek. Hours passed, visitors came and went when the emotions grew too high for them. But, still I remained seated by his side, sliding my hand into his, hoping he’d grab back like I had seen in the movies. A miracle, that’s what I waited all this time for.

11:25 PM. The clock struck silently as my eyes shut into a forced sleep. My arms were rested over the plastic guard bar of his bed, our fingers still laced. The dark of my resting mind swirled quietly, like a sanctuary to my own stress. The clock was ticking over and over, setting the stage for a medium to collect my thoughts. And just as soon as they had come, the darkness was pierced by an abrupt sound, a scream, chaos.

I was taken back to the phone call, the scream I had heard on the other line, the abrupt panic that had followed. The confusion that had felt regurgitated with full force. Light passed through my eyes as they shot open. My arm, there was pressure on it. Was it Jeremy? Had my miracle come true? He was holding my hand, he was walking up! The daze of my sleep left me disoriented, as I looked forward into the eyes of a nurse, the one who had lead Brian and I. She was screaming at me in Spanish, something I didn’t understand in my peace.

A tug at my arm followed as the reality switch was flipped. A heart monitor blasted out across the small room, technicians were flooding in. One of them was holding Jeremy’s eyelid open, the whites exposed as the iris rolled farther back into his head.

I was pulled from my seat from a man, who began ushering my from the room. I retaliated, kicking and screaming, holding onto anything I could find. I wasn’t going to leaving him here to die alone. Not here, not now.

“Let me go!” I screamed over the pandemonium, checking for my mother to see only that her chair was empty, “Jeremy! I’m not leaving him!”

Jeremy’s body was circled, only an inch of his head now visible. He was shaking, sputtering. The racing of the monitor increasing as another came to escort me away. I extended my arm, grabbing towards the sheets on his bed as the tears poured down my cheeks. The clock struck 11:30.

“Jeremy!” I sobbed, pulled towards the door as I ceased my fight, “Don’t do this to me! No, don’t do this! I can’t live without you!”

His pulse flat lined as I was pulled through the doors by my arms. A howl of sadness let loose from my throat, echoing down the halls. One so intense, it might have awaken the corpses in the morgue from their eternal sleep. My head sank, and I collapsed to my knees, vision going in and out.

“You aren’t suppose to die in Costa Rica.” I choked, ignoring the requests to rise again onto my feet, “You’re not suppose to die at twenty four. Your not suppose to die before your children are born. Not before me, not now.”

My knees wouldn’t operate, even if I wanted them to as the frustrated requests continued. Taking a staggered, heavy breath, my mind sunk. And, with my thoughts, I fell into an inky darkness, the sound of a flat line ringing through my mind. Jeremy Lusk, my brother, my rock, my soul, was dead, and he was never coming home.