The Call I Made to My Brother First

I do not remember much of that drive except the clock on my phone and the mile markers going by.

I texted Bert once, somewhere around Owingsville. I typed and erased it three times before I sent it. Surgeons run late. Consults run long. I thought if I could just get there before he signed, I could still be in that room. In the end all I wrote was, “I’m coming. Don’t sign anything until I get there.”

He read it. The little word came up under it. He did not answer.

Around Mount Sterling he said, “My mother had a stroke in ’09. My sister and me fought over her care like two dogs over a bone for a whole year.”

“She passed while we were still fighting,” he said. “We won every argument and lost her anyway. I don’t say that to tell you your business. I just say get there first. Fight later, if there’s anything left worth fighting.”

I held my phone in both hands and watched a cattle trailer pass us in the left lane, full of steers headed to the sale. I did not answer him. I did not trust my voice.

At 8:50 we were coming into the edge of Lexington with the traffic starting to thicken. At 9:10 we were stopped at a light with the hospital towers right there, close enough to see the windows.

We pulled into the visitor lot at 9:16. Percy had already called a tire shop a mile away that opened at seven on Saturdays. He would drop my car off after he dropped me.

“Go on,” he said. “I’ll text you where she is. Pay me when you can.”

I paid him right there, all six hundred, on my debit card on his little phone reader, because I was raised that a man who gets up in the dark for you gets paid before you walk off.

Bert was standing outside the main entrance by the bench, alone, like he had been waiting for me. Maybe he had.

He did not look surprised to see me climb down out of a tow truck. That is the thing I remember most. He looked tired, and he looked ashamed, and he did not look one bit surprised.

“It’s done,” Bert said before I could say anything. “They take him back at eleven.”

“You talked to the surgeon.”

“At eight thirty. Dr. Ellison. He looked at the new scans. He said either way was reasonable.”

“Which one did you pick?”

He swallowed. “The small one. Two holes. Drain it.”

“The doctor in Morehead said the big one gets all of it.”

“The doctor said a lot of things, Greta.” His voice was flat and careful, like a man walking across ice. “This one said the small one was a good choice for a man Dad’s age. It’s signed.”

I had a hundred things to say. I had sixty-five miles’ worth of things to say. I had six years of things to say. I stood there in that lot with my hands shaking in my jacket pockets and I asked him one.

“Did you take my valve cores, Bert?”

He looked down at the pavement for a long time. A car went by looking for a space. A helicopter came in low over the roof, and the sound of it faded out.

“Go see Dad,” he said finally, very quiet. “He’s in pre-op. He’s asking for Mom.”