The Bond of Brothers

They stood outside, neither saying a word. Patrick leaned over a bush waiting for the waves of nausea to cease along with the violent retching. It wasn’t just a random case of an upset stomach. The meager contents of his belly seemed to have exploded from his body in a single retching seizure leaving him trembling and weak. Not a feeling he relished in the least bit.

“Is it the meds making you feel like this?” Kevin asked while he searched his pockets for a handkerchief.

“I think it was pure terror.” Patrick said gratefully taking the offered piece of white cloth. He blotted the tears from his eyes and sweat that clung to the rest of his face. He still shook, but not with the same viciousness as before. “She shouldn’t have done that. She knows I’m not ready for this.” He indicated the gathering in his living room.

“Actually, I think the guys and out parents planned this disaster.”

“You don’t have to defend her.” Patrick snapped with a coldness that made Kevin flinch. The flash of anger lit up his clammy face like he had seen several times since Patrick awoke from the coma. “All she does is push. Like she can fucking force me to remember. All of this. This place, these people. Stupid nameless people that I don’t fucking know.”

“You can’t really blame her, Patrick.”

Fighting with him would be a waste of what little strength he had left. He let out a defeated sigh and slid down on to a white iron bench. Kevin couldn’t help but notice how bad his little brother’s hands shook. It didn’t stop at his hands, but reached all the way to his heart. Patrick could feel it vibrating through his bones and making his teeth ache. For once, in what felt like years to Kevin, Patrick dropped his shield of indignation. “I know.”

Kevin filled the empty space beside Patrick and talked gently to his little brother. Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “She’s in a lot of pain too. You almost died on her. It was terrifying for us all, but for her it was the worst. That night, all we could do was wait for a miracle to come or a nightmare to begin. We didn’t know how to console each other, because it was killing each one of us. Elisa was the one who had to be strong. Kept our mom and dad from falling apart. And everyday she stayed by your side. Even when people tried to tell her it looked hopeless, she refused to give up on you. Still refuses to. You did come back, but only partially. It’s like we were given both.”

“Kevin.” Patrick began hoping to stop the man from continuing. He didn’t need more guilt heaped upon his shoulders. But, he closed his mouth and held back his words.

“She’s still waiting for a miracle.” Kevin said softly. His eyes fell from Patrick’s to his shoes. He could feel the other man’s sad stare on him. “Still waiting for you to come back to her.”

“It’s not like I’m doing this on purpose.” Patrick found his voice, but the words caused his throat to ache more. He was literally choking on them as fresh pain reached his chest. A sob locked behind his ribs with his pride securing its prison. “I am trying to remember her. It kills me when I look at her, and I see all this love pouring from her. I know I must have felt that way about her before...before the accident. I did, right, Kevin? I did love her.”

“Yes, you did. I believe that with all my heart” Kevin swung an arm around Patrick’s shoulders, and was relieved when the smaller man did not push him away. Unshielded pain radiated from Patrick as he finally relinquished the wall he had built up. He looked up and his face went blanch. But it wasn’t that that forced the color from his face. It was the look on Elisa’s face. She stood just behind the rose bushes, rigid in her place like one of the many statues that littered the backyard. Kevin tried to not tense up and alert Patrick to the fact that they were no longer alone. “You still do, Patrick.”

It was a wasted effort, but he had to try. It didn’t make her feel any better. Without a word, she turned from them and walked back into the house. Kevin paused to watch her go and thought about calling out to her. But maybe that would not be the best thing to do. There was way too much hurt between them. Trying to force Patrick to face his wife would only lead to resentment. So he didn’t tell him that she had overheard him. It wouldn’t do any good.

“It’s so frustrating.” Patrick’s voice broke through Kevin’s thoughts and brought him back to him. “She’s the one person I want to remember the most. Well, both her and Matt. But no matter how hard I try, I can’t. It was all taken away from me, Kevin. Every damn piece of my life. Some of it I don’t give a shit about. The career. The fans. Doesn’t mean jack to me. I want to be able to pick up my son and feel love for him. Feel the way a father is supposed to feel. I would sacrifice every other memory to get that back.”

As Patrick opened up, Kevin once again felt that bond and need to protect him. There was a connection there that did not rely on memory or past. It went way beyond that. It was that bond that they had since children, since the day Patrick came into this world and when he was almost cruelly taken away from them. Patrick felt the same pull as he dropped his guard more and more around him. He could not recall their childhood together. He did not remember the good and the not-so-good times they shared. He just felt it. “I must sound stupid.”

“Not even a little.” He smiled before taking Patrick into a quick bear hug. “You don’t realize it now, little man, but that desire to remember them stems from love. It’s inside you, and we’re going to find it. And you’re right. All the rest is just bullshit. Don’t worry about the guys. Screw the record company and that fucking management team. They don’t matter.”

“You know.” Tears slipped down his face and this time he did not try to quickly wipe them away before Kevin could notice. He brandished his emotions for all to see. “No one gets it. Except you. You’re the only one.”

“I think the guys are trying.”

“Please.” He wiped his cheeks dry and forced himself to lose his frown. “Their efforts are not for me. It’s all about management.”

“Management has always been gutless money hogs. But the fans and the guys are willing to wait for you to get better on your own time.”

“To tell you the truth. I don’t even think I like them.” Patrick let his attention drift from Kevin to the party scene. “Not one bit.”

“Who? The fans?” He cut his eyes in Patrick’s direction. In his gut he knew where Patrick was going with this, but waited for him to put it in to his own words.

“No.” Patrick couldn’t tear his eyes away from Elisa and Joe. They chattered about unknown things, but occasionally glanced in their direction. He spotted Pete with Andy and they too stared at him. Patrick’s frown returned and hardened his handsome features. “Them. I don’t like them.”

*********************************

Patrick sat on the full size bed, staring down at the burgundy carpet below his feet. It was soft and rich like everything else in the room. Each item looked as if it had been carefully picked out, so that everything matched all the way down to the tiny threads in the throw pillows. This wasn’t his normal room, as he had been told by Elisa. After his behavior earlier at his surprise party, her own tone had grown somewhat colder. She was angry with him, and he knew it. He wasn’t sure if it was this that brought her to the conclusion that they should not share the same room. Or maybe it wasn’t stemmed from cruelty or hurt. Maybe she knew that he had been put through enough for one day. It would only be temporary, she had told herself while Patrick wondered why it was bothering him so much. After all, how comfortable would it be for him to be in bed with a woman he could not remember? To be fair, he realized it would be like being in bed with a stranger for her too.

She had given her thanks and bid their guests goodnight for both of them. Patrick hid in the bedroom, no longer able to tolerate the annoying chatter. No one said anything to Elisa as they left about Patrick’s abrupt departure, but she knew what they were all thinking. There was something terribly wrong with Patrick. That accident had done more than just steal his memories. It had taken far more than that. Those terrible few moments on that dark treacherous roadway was time enough to rob them all of him. Gone was the gentle man who rarely had a cross word with anyone. Gone was the sweetness and charm. It wasn’t just his mind erased. It seemed like his very being had been expunged and altered.

Even Patrick realized this. Everyone’s normal way of acting around him now aroused such a different response from him. This caused them all to be tense around him, as if making their way through a mind field. No one had to point this out to him. He knew exactly what was going on. And he felt about as much control over this as he did his screwed up brain. “This is so fucking messed up.”

He didn’t sleep in his new room. He tried to use the relaxation techniques he was taught while in rehab, but it did very little to ease the tension from his entire body. After laying flat on his back watching the ceiling fan spin slowly around, he finally gave in to the fact that he was not going to get any sleep. So he waited until Elisa turned her lights out before venturing out of his room and around the huge house. That first night he walked from room to room, but avoided the master bedroom and the study. The next night was very much the same, and it quickly became a pattern. Long nights followed by irritable days. The only place he managed to doze off was on the back screened-in porch. An old wooden swing became his cure. Until the wee hours of the morning, he would swing listening to the sounds of the suburban woods around him. As soon as the nightmares found where he hid, he could no longer stand to be out there in the dark all alone. If only he could recall the details of those dreams, then maybe they would disappear and leave him be. Until then, he had to put up with it. The only snippet he could recall played over and over in his mind cruelly taunting him and refusing to reveal any more of its secrets.

The darkness engulfed him with its hands, while the silence filled his ears to deafen him and his lungs to steal his voice. He could hear his own painful gasps for air, but nothing else. Panic set in just as the darkness was replaced with a brilliance that made him flinch and cry out in pain. Then a single thought came to him and replayed over and over. “If I stop. I die.”

Patrick tried to shake away the thoughts, but they managed to sneak back in and taunt him from a corner of his already disconcerted mind. It was something he didn’t want to dwell on. In his gut, he knew that remembering could be just as bad as not. He couldn’t give any concrete evidence to support that fact. It was just a feeling. He didn’t want to recall the events of that night.

When the voice that had startled him at his unwelcome surprise party began to taunt him in his dreams and then follow him, once again, into the waking world, Patrick had had enough. Closing his eyes became unbearable. He didn’t want to dream. But pouring coffee down his throat at all hours of the night and day were taking a dangerous toll on him. Both his body and nerves were shot. He had yet to return to his former weight and strength while he was in the hospital. Now, he was backsliding again.

Elisa noticed it too. They sat across from each other at the breakfast table, but neither one ate. She fed Matt his favorite cereal, while Patrick sat quiet, staring off into space. He mumbled something about seeing a bird on the white gate outside the window, but she knew that wasn’t what held his attention. He looked beyond exhausted. Dark circles wrapped around his eyes. Lines of worry etched themselves across his face. He looked ten years older. “You’re starting to worry me.”

“Just starting to?” Patrick flashed his eyes in her direction briefly.

“I heard you last night.” Elisa ignored the chilly tone. “You were up late. And when you did sleep, I could hear you crying out.”

The so-called bird lost its appeal, and Patrick finally looked directly at her. Alarm lit up the irises, but only briefly. “What was I saying?”

“I don’t want to die.”

“Who would want to?” He replied with a half-cocked smile. But she wasn’t buying it.

“Was it because you were afraid you were dying in that wreckage? Or was it before that, Patrick?” Queasiness hit her stomach, but she forced herself to ignore it and ask these questions. If she didn’t bring it up and put the issue on the table, he sure as hell never would. “While you were driving so fast, did you tell yourself that?”

“How the hell am I supposed to know that?” The defensive tone returned and that wall he had built around himself refused to crumble just the slightest bit. He didn’t want to talk about this. Not now, not tomorrow, not ever! “All I know about that night is what you have told me. I could have been dreaming about something else. I watched that stupid movie. Shit, what was it called? Jason something. Jason back from hell in Manhattan something. Fuck it, don’t know. Maybe it was him I was running from.”

“Patrick...” That damn look of disappointment returned to her face. He bit his lip and turned from her. He wanted to wipe that fucking look right off her face.

“I don’t want to talk about this right now, Elisa.” He pushed away from the table skidding the chair legs across the floor. It made a charring sound that frightened Matt. The boy began to cry, but it did not halt Patrick. He slammed the chair back and stalked out of the kitchen. He wanted to put as much distance between him and that woman. She just didn’t fucking get it. Hell, he didn’t fucking get it.

Seething with anger and regret Patrick stomped his way up the back stairs to the room that he now called his. He knew he was acting childish and looked foolish for fleeing like he had, but sometimes that was the only thing he could do…..run. He seemed to be doing that all the time. Avoid and run. Exhausted and depressed he laid back on his bed and cursed at himself. She didn’t understand and he was doing a piss poor job explaining. He felt everything at once like a crashing wave and his still healing mind was having a hard time sorting it all out. He was angry. There was no doubt there. He glared up at the ceiling. What was the point of all this? Save him from death just to torture him with this fragmented shell of a man who felt like he was slowly being driven mad.

There was another emotion that he despised but it was always there. Fear. He was scared of opening those sealed doors in the recesses of his mind and letting whatever pain and demons that dwelled there out for all to see. What if the demon he was so afraid is was actually himself. He pushed himself up on his elbows bothered deeply by that last thought. He brushed the thoughts away. He couldn’t deal with anymore or he was going to scream until his lungs burst. “What the fuck is wrong with me?” He groaned as tears managed to make their way down his reddened cheeks.

That night, he finally started to feel bad for the way he had acted towards Elisa. He glanced at the clock. 2:00 am glowed green taunting him. “Damn this.” He kicked the covers off and yanked his robe off the floor. He was getting damn tired of this. The longer he stayed here, the more difficult it was becoming to avoid conversations about his former life. He turned to go to the master bedroom, but saw the light on in Matt’s room. She was there again.

He cracked the door open, then slowly let it swing wide revealing the entire room. Elisa sat in the glider rocker in the far corner. Matt was bundled up in her arms with a Mickey Mouse blanket covering his small body. He was asleep, thank God. She looked up at him, but did not speak. He could only stare at them. Her long dark hair laid in waves past her shoulder. The thin pink robe clung to her body just like Matt did. The small boy’s face looked perfect and serene. The anger that had compelled him to rise vanished. “I was an ass.” I’m sorry.”

Elisa’s heart skipped a beat. He hadn’t apologized for anything since the day he woke up. She smiled at him. This was progress.

Patrick shuffled uncomfortably but remained rigid in the door frame. He wanted to come in but wasn’t sure he should. This was already hard enough. Clearing his throat he managed to look at her directly. “I....I want to start the counseling.”

She could have jumped for joy if Matt wasn’t in her arms. She smiled and prepared to say something, but he closed the door quickly. But that didn’t matter. He had finally agreed to do it. That was what mattered. Finally, they would start to piece together some form of their previous life. Some how. She gazed down at their young son and kissed him gently on the forehead. His wild blond curls tickled her nose causing her to smile even deeper. “You are so much like your father.”

He leaned against the door to their son’s room listening to her soft words. He smiled but wondered how such a statement could be true. He was nothing like he used to be and Matt was such a pleasant child with tears and temper tantrums a rarity. In all truth, it was he who was the one prone to temper tantrums. Sometimes he felt like a child. He was unsure of what he felt most of the time and dealing with his emotions felt foreign. His outer being he could maintain a stoic stance allowing only his anger to surface for those to see. The inner turmoil, however, was what he had perfected at keeping private. Or so he thought. He hoped that this was the wise move for him and his family.

He was going to try the counseling. He at least owed his family that much. Even if he never regained those memories of his past life, he needed to learn how to deal with this new one. If he and Elisa had any chance at all, he had to make this step. He listened to her softly sing a lullaby to Matt and he longed to be there beside her. He longed for that connection.

Not wanting to e caught eavesdropping, he made his way back to his room. A calmness had finally settled over him and sleep was no longer the enemy. He slept soundly with no dreams of darkness and pain. Tomorrow would be the new start.