I am sitting in the ICU waiting room waiting for my brother to have a small hole drilled into the top of his head for a drain to be put in with the hopes of reducing the pressure in his head due to bleeding. This is not how I expected to spend the night before Thanksgiving.

Kevin and I live together in the house our parents helped us to buy. He lives upstairs and I live downstairs. Many people don’t even know I have a brother, or, if they do, they’ve probably never met him. My brother is a hermit, but in a good way. He is the sweetest, most-gentlest human being on the planet. I tend to make the joke that both our parents are passive-aggressive, and while I inherited all the aggressive, Kevin inherited all the passive. I am the loud one. I am the annoying one. I am the obnoxious sibling. I am the one who was locked out of our older cousin’s room as a kid while Kev was allowed in because all he did was sit quietly in the corner and read.

He doesn’t really like meeting new people. He will, and it doesn’t really bother him, but that doesn’t mean he likes it. I am the social butterfly, but he is my baby brother, and I will protect him against anyone who tries to cause him harm. I don’t know if he is going to be okay. It is 12:06 in the morning and he hasn’t been coherent since I watched him leave with the paramedics around 8:30pm.

It started around 6pm and it happened so bloody fast (sorry for the bad pun, but I need something right now). He threw up once in his room and then again in the bathroom. I didn’t understand what I was hearing at first because he never throws up. ***Update: they are performing the procedure for the drain right now. Dear God, please let it help.*** After throwing up the second time, Kev said he felt better and proceeded to clean up the mess. But he soon was in the bathroom again, retching, and I was on the phone with our mom trying to decide if I needed to call 911.

I waited about 30 minutes and then called the paramedics. Kev was lying in the bathroom with his blanket and pillow that I had brought down to him. He couldn’t stand because he felt so dizzy. The paramedics helped him onto his feet and out of the bathroom into the living room. He couldn’t walk by himself or keep his balance. I have never felt so sick and helpless in my life, and all I could do was think, “this is how he feels every time I have a nasty low blood sugar.” I can’t begin to count how many times Kev has helped me when I couldn’t help myself. He was the one who called the paramedics for me. I feel sick to my stomach because of how worried and apologetic he was for having to need my help tonight. I wish I could help him understand how much I am willing to sacrifice myself if it meant he would never need to suffer.

I didn’t always feel this way about my brother. As kids, I spent a long time resenting my brother for not being stronger like me. For not standing up, or even just standing by my side during times of trouble. He was always willing to let me talk him into doing something we shouldn’t, but then he was always the first one to run away and hide when we were about to get caught. That pissed me off. Yet, it never mattered how mad I might be at him if someone else were to think it was a good idea to bully him. I am the loud one. I am the one who will fight. I am the one to throw punches and destroy anyone who dares to hurt my brother. The words loyal, adamant, and resolved do not even begin to express how strongly I will fight to protect my brother.

I had to fight for my brother while we were in the Emergency Room tonight, and I know it helped him to feel a little bit calmer—or maybe it was just the sedative finally beginning to work, but I feel better thinking he knew, even within his delirium, that I was in the room protecting him, fighting for him, and his knowing that he was not alone helped him to find a little peace. The hospital chaplain has been sitting with me all evening and I appreciate his support, but I don’t want to talk with him. I want to try, but this is where my brother and I are very similar. I may be loud, but I am content with silence. Tonight, however, was not the night for my silence.

Kev had to be helped walking out of the house onto the gurney for his ride to River Bend Hospital in Springfield. He was completely coherent the entire time he talked with me, with our mom on the phone, and with the paramedics. By the time I walked into his room in the ER he was completely incoherent. He couldn’t straighten his legs, he couldn’t answer me when I greeted him, and I stood rooted in place in the doorway horrified to see him so delirious. It was the most terrifying and disturbing moment I can think of. The doctor started asking me questions about his mental health, if he had a job, did he drink or do drugs, where did he live, on and on. I answered her questions and watched as they wheeled him out for a CT Scan. When I called my mom, she was almost in tears as she told me about what had happened before I arrived.

Kev was in the ER for more than an hour before the taxi was able to drop me off. My mom had called the hospital to get information and spoke with a nurse. My mom was infuriated because of the way the nurse had immediately begun to ask questions about my brother’s mental health and living situation. The nurse had asked all the same questions the doctor asked me when I walked into the room a half hour later. My mother had emphatically informed the nurse that Kevin had been completely alert when he had spoken with her a half hour earlier on the phone, and when the paramedics helped him from the house. My mother’s intelligent impression (from a lifelong career of being an RN) was that the nurse had simply looked at my hermit brother, heard his ramblings, and took that to mean drugs, alcohol, homelessness, or mental deficiency. I was now irate.

The next time the doctor came in to talk with me was to tell me that my brother had a bleed in his brain and they were waiting for the neurology team to confer and decide on the next step. I demanded to know why the information my mother had provided to the nurse was not adequately provided to the doctor as a means to initiate a quicker response to the possibility of a stroke or an aneurism. The doctor, of course, gave me her litany of bullshit answers only geared towards the medical necessity of not admitting someone might have made a mistake. She finally made some halfhearted attempt at an apology for something meaningless, but I don’t remember what. I simply told her it was good of her to try and make an apology, but I did back off and simply let her speak.

Kev was moved into another room after his scans and that is where I came face-to-face with the nurse who had talked with my mother. I was adamant in demanding to know why she had failed to provide relevant information to the doctor in a timely fashion as to increase the chances for my brother’s recovery. She claimed the paramedics had brought my brother in with the description of saying he had been suffering from fatigue. I called her out, in front of everyone in the room, and said her reply was “Bullshit!” specifically because she had spoken with my mom who had specifically told her that my brother was coherent and alert only 30 minutes prior. I loudly accused the nurse of making assumptions about my brother, and hampering his opportunity to be healed quickly, because she made the assumption that he was either a drunk, drug addict, homeless, or mentally disabled. I accused her vociferously in a room full of emergency medical personnel who were all staring at me speechless, and right next to where my brother was struggling for his life.

Of course, the woman tried to tell me there was no way she had made any assumptions, but I called her out on that as well. I informed the entire room, “I am a Type 1 Diabetic so I know damn well how easy it is for someone to be ignorant enough to think drugs or alcohol is the problem simply because a person is incapable of speaking for themselves! I have had the exact same ignorant assumptions placed upon me when I have been low, so I know damn well what it looks and feels like when someone makes those assumptions.” As a result of my tirade, a security officer was called into the room to keep an eye on me. I had already promised my mom to not get kicked out of the hospital (I am the loud, annoying and obnoxious one, remember?). What amazes me is how every one of those medically trained individuals could not recognize how controlled my anger was every time I would back down after getting the answer I was demanding.

The security guard didn’t stay for very long. It was easy to see his presence was not honestly required. I did have to smile while I stood next to my brother’s bed and texted my mom to let her know I had Security called on me, but that I had managed to not get kicked out yet. The only other outburst I made the staff suffer through was when I was trying to get the most basic of information from the doctor. She had come back to tell me that the neurologist was having trouble with his computer at home and couldn’t get a clear picture of the scan to study. The angiogram had been scheduled for the morning, but no decision had been made about whether to put in a drain or not. It was looking like an aneurism, and the hope was that lowering his blood pressure would help the bleed to self-heal.

“So,” I said, “you’re telling me that his brain is bleeding, the doctor can’t read the scan well enough to determine if a drain needs to be applied, the angiogram is scheduled for the morning, and the only thing we can do until the doctor is able to actually read the scan to determine if a drain will help or not is to wait and hope that my brother’s brain stops bleeding all on its own. Is that correct?”

“Yes.”

Well. Okay then. “So,” I asked her, “can you give me a guess, or an estimate, or a time range as for how long it might take before he is moved into the ICU?” This question received a very long and convoluted response that simply refused to answer the question. Finally, one of the male nurses (who had been called in earlier because of my unpredictable behavior) said to me, “a couple hours, maybe.” I thanked him and looked back to the doctor and sweetly said, “that wasn’t so hard. At least he answered the question for you because you never did bother to answer the question at all. It isn’t a very difficult question. Hell, it almost has an answer as easy as ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ It certainly beats the hell out of me why you can’t be bothered to answer such an incredibly simple question.” Okay. Maybe they were smart to call in the security guard earlier, but everyone in the room listening to me was perfectly aware of how reasonable and cognizant my questions were. But, just to be on the safe side I did demand of the doctor, “am I asking too unreasonable of a question for you?” She had no further replies.

By this time the hospital chaplain was in the room to replace the security guard as my watchdog. I was not in the mood to put up with being ‘handled’ and I told everyone to leave the room and go away. When they stood and looked at me, I reiterated, “you are doing nothing to help my brother at this point. I do not want you standing around hovering. Please go away.” And they left. Except the chaplain. He was a very kind and supportive man. We simply sat in silence. At one point he asked if Kev would mind having his hand held and I told him it was okay. Later in the evening, he asked me, “is there any kind of thought or prayer I can say for your brother?” I smiled and told him the truth, “anything good will help. Thank you.”

I sat by the gas fire in the ICU waiting room, waiting for the drain to be put into the hole drilled into the top of my brother’s head. The chaplain sat with me and we waited in silence. Now I am in my brother’s room waiting for him to wake up. The most optimistic outcome will be that Kev wakes up and is aware and able to talk. The doctor is expecting this to be a long hospital stay, but hopefully only for a week or so. Worse-case scenario. . . well, I’m not exactly sure what that is, but I’m hoping we won’t have to find out. My parents tried to drive down from Bellingham tonight, but were exhausted by the rain and are trying to sleep in a hotel room in Tacoma. I am sitting on a chair in my brother’s room that can be pulled out into a bed, but I’m not ready to sleep. I want to watch my brother sleep and believe he will wake up and be okay. I want to tell him I love him and I’m sorry for being such a pain to live with at times. I want to let him know, considering he has one tube coming out of the top of his head, one coming out of his nose, and a tube collecting the piss right out of his kidneys, that he wins. For life. He now has the lifetime achievement award for being sicker in the hospital then me and my diabetes have ever been. Damn him. This is one contest I never wanted to compete in, let alone lose.