What Happens Next
What Happens Next
Spencer Nitkey
Everett might never talk again. That’s what they say—the doctors, my parents, my other older brother, my aunt Kathy crying in the lobby, my grandfather staring at the yellow hills above the hospital like they’re going to be the last thing he ever sees. There’s this long, long list of things that he might never do again.
He might not talk. He might not walk. He might not be able to swallow or bathe himself. He may not be able to see. It’s not just that he won’t talk, either. He will not be able to understand a single word anyone says ever again.
No one told me all that, they just told me the walking part, but you pick things up, as a kid, just milling around adults in crisis. All the things they usually whisper or wait till we’re asleep to say just spring from their mouths like a flock of startled birds. I think they assume we’ll forget most of it, but I won’t. All I do is pay attention. I’m not sure what else I’m supposed to do in a place like this, all fluorescence and sad faces and too-small TV screens and broken legs and “CODE BROWN-SEPSIS 4 minutes out” announcements and the old man who won’t stop screaming and Everett, asleep with a tube coming out his mouth and his hand strapped to the bed so he won’t mindlessly scrape at the scabs on his head.
***
It’s right there, he said. I can get it. I’ve got it. I’ve—
***
Everett might never talk again, but his eyes are finally open. They’re glassy, and he seems, still, to be so far away from us. My parents tell me he probably won’t understand what’s happening, but that I can hold his hand and talk to him if I want.
The doctors remind us all, right outside his ICU room, that he can’t understand what we were saying. The fall had damaged more than his spine. He’d also hit his head so hard that his brain was swelling in size—like a thumb after you hit it with a hammer—the neurologist said. They’d removed part of his skull to make space for it, which would have seemed cool if it wasn’t Everett they had to do it to. There’s a big crater on his temple. I can’t look at Everett or I’ll stare at it the whole time.
He blinks and I try to hold his hand for fifteen seconds before I ask if I can leave to go to the bathroom. Dad nods and Mom understands. Outside, there’s a little square space with crowded benches in between the two ICU wings where people go to get fresh air. There’s nowhere to sit, so I just stand and try to breathe. In and out. In and out.
***
Three days in and I’ve gotten from 15 seconds to 20 minutes without needing a break. It’s weird being with my brother like this. I’m so used to following him around, praying he’ll give me some attention, hoping I can run just fast enough to keep him from disappearing over the horizon. Now, I have to choose when I disappear from him.
The doctors keep making Dad cry, and Mom get angry. I forget his name, the doctor, but I call him Doctor Doom because everything he says is negative and brutal. The first time I said it, my aunt Kathy laughed, so that’s what he’s called now. He keeps trying to explain things to my parents like they’re children and things to me like I’m an adult.
“It’s like he’s been hit in the head with a baseball bat,” he says, miming a swinging motion. Everett flicks his wrist like he’s swinging a bat, too. Just some subconscious jerk I try really hard not to read into.
It’s important to understand, he says over and over again. It’s very important to understand that he cannot understand us. He may follow us with his eyes as we pace around his bed. He may nod or smile when we talk to him. This is all habit and guesswork. Like a test you haven’t studied for.
I don’t believe him, probably because I don’t want to believe him. I’m scared, so I don’t trust myself anymore. I don’t know who I am in this place, in this aftermath. The antiseptic lights wash everything in a pale white, the yellow floors seem like they might stretch out forever.
***
The ball hit the top of the fence and wedged in one of the diamonds between wires. It was at least sixteen feet up and Everett didn’t even hesitate. I should have told him to leave it, but he said that my first hit of a future D-1 pitcher (him) should be memorialized, so he’d get it. I wanted him to get it. Up and up he climbed. It didn’t even cross my mind to be nervous. He was Everett.
***
The neurologist told my parents to try to talk with him and touch him instead of just letting him watch TV all day. I don’t know why we’re supposed to talk if he can’t understand. Yesterday he spiked a fever, and they rushed him to an MRI to see if he was—well, I don’t know—dying, I guess? I cried in the car, and Dad held me tight so I wouldn’t notice him crying, too. But I did. His whole body rocks when he cries.
He’s fine, now, I think, Everett. They have him pumped full of antibiotics, and keep adding new ones. My parents know what to do, what to say, how to be around Everett like this. I don’t, so I turn on the TV and find the only thing that makes sense to me. The Giants are playing the Yankees.
I can’t focus on the game like I normally would. The Giants suck again, and the Yankees are smashing all kinds of homers this season—I think. Normally, this time of year, I’d know everything about almost everyone playing. The things I didn’t know, Everett would, and we’d be filling in each other’s gaps every game. But now, right now they might as well be playing cricket on the moon. I have trouble remembering Logan Webb’s name, let alone his stats, as he slings pitches over the plate and catches the Yankees just looking.
I don’t know how to explain how molasses-thick my thoughts are, how heavy everything feels all the time. I stand in front of the hospital bathroom door for fifteen seconds trying to recall how doorknobs work.
When I’m in his room, and I don’t know what I’m supposed to say or do to someone who apparently can’t understand me or say anything back, when it’s all too heavy, baseball helps.
Until it doesn’t.
***
One of my parents is always at the hospital. There’s a twin-sized mattress that folds out from a closet in his room. At first we all stayed—then they’d send me home with Kathy or Grandpa—then just one of them at a time. They want to be around me, too, they say. It’s been two weeks; he’s stable and blinking and breathing.
Aunt Kathy stays with Mom. Ostensibly, she sleeps in the guest room, but most of the time they sleep together, like when they were little. Kathy says she can’t sleep alone, but I know it’s because my mother won’t let anyone else hold her right now,” and everyone needs to be held in times like these,” Kathy says.
I can’t sleep. I stare at the fading glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to my bedroom ceiling above my bed. All day they charge up in the sun, and then slowly, as the night stretches on, they fade. By the time they’re dark, I’m still awake.
Kathy and Mom fell asleep with the TV on, so I don’t have to be too careful. I know which stairs groan and which take my weight silently. I slide through the back door because it doesn’t have anything that jingles when it opens.
It’s only a fifteen-minute walk to the field. It’s been raining off and on for weeks, which we need. The hills surrounding the valley have shifted green. The baseball infield is an ocean of clay. The fence he climbed is still caution-taped off. Standing on the outside, the moon sits bright between the metal intersections, like a wedged foul ball.
I don’t know why I’m here. There’s nothing but the tape that suggests the enormity of what happened. In a week, middle schoolers will be sweating in the outfield, parents yelling from the stands, and coaches grunting in the dugouts. It’s all my fault. No one will know what this place can become. It’ll just be baseball again. My limbs feel like they might belong to someone else. There’s a thudding in my ears, and it feels like the sky is crashing down, burying me. My chest races so quickly, I know I’ll never catch it. I’m waiting for it to happen again. For a thud. A finale. A moment. Nothing comes. I try to breathe, but every other inhale gets stuck on my ribs.
The sky clouds suddenly as my body shakes. The air cracks open, and rain washes me. Drenches me. The patter on my skin brings my body back to me, enough to notice I’m soaked. Discomfort is a strange balm, but it’s enough. I am still—me.
I collect enough of myself to walk away. The baseball field disappears. I don’t think I’ll go back again soon. Maybe ever. I don’t know what I wanted from the evening, but it didn’t give it to me.
In my bedroom, I slip the wet clothes off and lie under the covers. Part of me hopes no one will wake me up ever again. That I won’t have to think about any of it. Just dream and dream forever.
***
Doctor Doom never talks to Everett. He strolls into the hospital room in his white coat and tells us things about Everett. His blood pressure is great. Healthy. His vitals are good. He will never understand a word we say. He will never talk. He may still die, but we are out of the probably dying phase. Now we work on recovery.
Dad asks quietly what that means.
Doctor Doom says, “More doctors, therapy, maybe a facility. Speak with the social worker,” and leaves.
Yesterday, someone from the hospital told us he’ll need 24/7 care forever. Everyone but me cried. Maybe I was naive, but don’t we all, always, need care? I don’t know, though. There’s so much I don’t know, which was fine for a while, but now it feels like I’m missing something vital.
All I want, I think, as my parents and the doctors talk above me, is to tell Everett I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t stop him. I’m sorry I didn’t tell him I didn’t want the ball. I’m sorry that I did want the ball. I’m sorry I was so excited when he started climbing that I cheered. I’m sorry that I didn’t know what to do when he fell. That it took some adult driving by in a car to call an ambulance cause I was just crying. I’m sorry I cared about the stupid hit so much, and that stupid muddy baseball we have sixteen thousand of in the garage. I want him to know how sorry I am, but he doesn’t understand words. He follows us around the room with his eyes. He cracks this tired, broken smile when someone makes a joke, but it’s all habit. I remind myself over and over again. It’s not real.
“Mind staying with Everett for a bit while we go find the social worker?” Dad says.
I don’t.
They leave, and it’s just the two of us and low regular beeps punctuated with hospital-wide announcements.
I scramble for the remote. I want to tell him so much. The Giants are playing the final game of the series in New York. It’s tied, and Aaron Judge is at bat. Everett locks into the game. One of his fingers weakly points towards it, so I’d look away from him and toward the screen. It’s funny, sometime over the past few weeks, I’ve shifted from avoiding him to watching him all the time. I can’t look away. I think I want to learn who this new brother of mine is. But the more I watch him, the more he reminds me of my Everett.
I turn to the TV. There’s a runner on first, and there are two outs, and it’s a tie game, and Aaron Judge is at the plate and Logan Webb (I remember this time!) is pitching. Webb throws two balls, and Everett won’t look away. I keep darting my eyes to look at him. He seems so there, so with it. Doctor Doom’s edicts hover in the room with us.
It’s late for Webb to be pitching, so his fastball is a touch slow. Judge punishes him immediately. The ball lifts like a rocket, and even the hospital room falls away. The jagged edges of everything disappear for a moment, and I’m up with the ball. Even when it’s a two-run homer scored on my Giants, the arc of that ball strips the world away for just a moment. Everett’s right at my side. We’re sailing. Sailing. Screaming fans grope wildly in the stands as the home run falls. Michael Kay is announcing, since the game is in New York. The delirium ends as I brace for his signature call.
“See ya!” he shouts hoarsely into the microphone.
I turn to Everett, and he’s looking at me. He rolls his eyes as the words leave Kay’s mouth. He rolls his eyes and tilts his head like ‘can you believe this guy?’
I laugh and nod before I realize what just happened. Everything freezes. I’m weightless again. The force of a billion home runs suspending me above the hospital, above the hills, above California, the whole world. I float there, in that moment.
“Did you… Did you understand that?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes again, sighs, and blinks purposefully.
He may never talk. He may never walk or be able to feed himself. But he can hear Michael Kay’s obnoxious, perfect call and roll his eyes. Which means he can hear me. I’m already crying, realizing what this means. I’m groping for an apology, stammering and stammering as Judge rounds the bases and the stadium cheers wildly. There’s so much to say, too much to ever say. I don’t know how I’m supposed to.
He clears his throat, so I look up from my hands and at him. He blinks again. Purposeful, again, that Everett kindness beaming from his eyes. Then he looks back at the TV with force. I don’t know precisely what he means but I understand him perfectly.
“Later,” I imagine him saying. “Stanton is already at the plate. It’s a nine-inning sport. Let’s see what happens next.”
I oblige him. He’s right. We turn, and both of us face the TV. I reach a hand out and hold his swollen, red fingers. Webb winds up. My brother and I watch what happens next.
Spencer Nitkey is a writer living in Philadelphia with his witch wife and a dog named after a French postmodernist. His writing has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Lightspeed Magazine, Nature Futures, and many others. You can find more about him and read more of his work on his website, spencernitkey.com.
Dominick Porto is an up-and-coming creative out of Rochester, NY. Combining his studies in Communication at the University of Mount Saint Vincent and his love for the creative process, he works as the Marketing Coordinator of Elevate, a fitness club in Rochester’s Neighborhood of the Arts District. In his spare time, he refines his design, illustration, and photography skills with personal projects. One common theme of these projects is baseball, a sport that Dominick played through college. He looks forward to future work and collaborations that share his appreciation for art with the public.
The Twin Bill is a nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status. You can support The Twin Bill by donating here.