When Sean was still in the hospital, I remember walking into his room and feeling the hurt all over again. He was gone forever all over again. I understood how my family had changed since I had left then. My wounds were scabbing over, theirs never would, so long as Sean was alive.

My mother sat on Sean’s good side and held her hand to his face, the one without the scar. Sean had not been shaved for some time and her hand rubbed against a soft beard. The hospital blanket was pulled up to his neck and I knew that just below that his chest had been turned into a scared mess from the fire.

My father was there too. He looked much older than when I had last seen him. The hair that had been going grey this fall had turned white. He had lost weight and his full face had turned haggard. He worked a lot, I knew. He called me sometimes from work late at night. I think he drank in the evenings from his office, after the rest of the team had left. Sometimes he would slur his speech. He was lonely. He had lost not only his son, but his wife. I tried to be there for him when he needed me. A call from dad could be a harangue, a lecture, or even a lament. Sometimes he cried.

He stood behind my mother and greeted me as I came into the room with a big hug. My mother stayed with Sean and looked up briefly to acknowledge my presence. I walked over to Sean’s bed and looked down at my baby brother.

He didn’t look as I had remembered him. His face looked soft and round, the product, no doubt of the feeding tubes efforts at keeping him fed. He smelled different too. I had always liked the way my brother smelled. He had tried one or two colognes before giving that up for the simple smell of soap, shampoo, and shaving cream. He smelled like any other man, but when I would come home from college and smell him for the first time again, I knew I he was my own brother and that I was home. Now he smelled like decay and antiseptic.

I leaned over him and kissed his forehead. My mother glared at my intrusion, then went back to looking at him.

I backed away and my father put his hand on my shoulder and guided me out of the room and down the hospital hallway. We passed the nurse’s station, still abuzz with activity and continued down to the other end of the wing in silence.

“What’s up dad?” I asked.

“He crashed in the middle of the night last night. Stopped breathing. They’ve got monitors on him that send an alert to the nurses when he goes critical. The nurses rushed in and pounded on his chest until he started breathing again I guess. He’s back up today, but his heard is weaker, the doctor says.”

“He’s shutting down,” I said, as much to myself as to my father. He didn’t respond. It was obvious. We started back down the hall in silence.

“How long?” I asked.

“Don’t know. Could be tonight. Could be next week. Maybe next year. They don’t really know.”

“Have you thought about pulling the plug?” I asked, studying his face for any reaction.

He winced and shook his head. “Not with your mother,” he said, his voice trailing off.

We walked back down the hall.

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