Totaled (32 page)

Standing there, winded and bleeding, I looked around at the madness of the scene and saw Liam on the ground. He was gushing blood from his head and not moving. I tried to go over to him but I was restrained by three men blocking my path.

“That’s my brother. Let me go to him. I’m cool. I’m fucking cool, man,” I begged.

The minutes that it took for me to hear the sirens of the ambulance arriving seemed to be slower than the second coming of God. But he was breathing. He wouldn’t respond to me, but he was breathing. Cops arrived and separated us all for our statements. As they loaded Liam onto a gurney and hauled him away, I yelled to the EMT, “What hospital are you taking him to?”

“Grady Memorial!” he shouted back.

It took forfuckingever to give our statements to the police. After the squirrely bartender and a few other patrons told the cops that Purifoy instigated the fight by pushing me first, he admitted that he started things. Understanding that we could both be disbanded from ever fighting in the UFC again for fighting in public, we both opted to not press any charges and everyone was released from custody. I spoke with the manager of the bar and apologized profusely for all of the trouble, promising to financially take care of any damages from the fight that needed repair. That seemed to appease him enough and we were on our way.

Brett agreed to head back to the hotel to wake Pat and tell him what happened. Tony and I caught a cab to Grady Memorial to check on Liam. I could’ve almost vomited in the back seat thinking of Liam being hurt, all because I popped off instead of walking away. How in the hell was I supposed to tell Bree?

We were the first ones to arrive and they wouldn’t give us any information. I finally pulled a cute young nurse aside that I noticed kept looking over at me. I turned on the charm, told her that Liam Murphy was my brother and that they wouldn’t let me see him or tell me where he was. Five minutes later, Tony and I were headed to the fifth floor. To Critical Care.

Stopping in the hallway, I noticed “MUR, L” written on a dry erase board. I walked briskly down towards the room, following the signs posted on the walls.

“Excuse me sir, you can’t go in there! Sir! Sir, stop!” I heard behind me.

I turned my head to the side just enough for my words to project down the hall. “Call the cops then!”

When I walked into Liam’s room, he was lying there, motionless, as a nurse jabbed a needle into his arm. Some way-too-young-to-be-a-doctor guy was standing in the corner with wrinkled scrubs and bed head, yawning.

“Excuse me, you can’t be in here, sir. Can we help you?” he had the nerve to ask me.

“Yeah. I’m his brother. And no one will tell me a goddamn thing. Who are you? Is he going to be okay?”

“I see,” he answered softly. “Well, I am Dr. Washington, the resident on call tonight for neurology. He appears to be in a coma as a result of severe head trauma after an assault earlier this evening.”

“He appears to be? Do you not fucking know if he is or isn’t? Is he going to wake up?”

The doctor winced at my raised voice and looked incredibly intimidated, which wasn’t necessarily my intention, but my adrenaline was coursing pure fear through my body and I couldn’t seem to reel it in.

“Sir, I understand that you’re upset. Please lower your voice and calm down and I will be happy to answer any of your questions.”

I took a deep breath and ran my hands over my hair, trying my best to get a hold of my emotions. “Sorry.” This seemed to calm the doctor as well.

“He
is
in a coma, breathing on his own, for now, but unresponsive to any physical or verbal stimulus at this point,” the doctor explained. “We’ll know a little more after his CT scan, which should be within the hour.”

“What’s a CT scan?” This motherfucker better start speaking my language.

“It’s a scan of the brain. You’re welcome to sit with him until he has to be transported downstairs for the scan.”

Welcome to or not, I wasn’t leaving his side.
“Thank you.”

I have to call Bree. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. How the hell do I tell her this?

***

BREE

I heard the ringing like it was from a distance, through a fog, and I swore I was dreaming. I squinted and blinked my eyes awake, reaching blindly for the phone on my bedside table. Drew’s face flashed over the screen next to his self-proclaimed title in my phone, “Grilled Cheese Master.” I swiped my finger to answer the call.

“Hello?”

“Bree? Can you hear me?”

“Yeah. What time is it?”

“It’s um, 3:50 am.” He sounded frantic and upset.

“Oh my God, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m okay. I’m sorry to wake you up, but…listen…it’s Liam.”

“Drew? You’re scaring me!” I sat up in my bed, wide awake now. “What happened?”

“Liam is in the hospital. He’s hurt, Bree. Bad.”

“What?”

“I’m so sorry, Bree. He’s in the CCU at Grady Memorial in Atlanta. I think you better get up here.”

“What? What happened? Is he okay? Is he
alive
? Oh my God. Where’s my father? Is
he
okay? Drew?”

“Pat’s fine. Liam is in a coma. Oh my God, Bree. I’m so sorry. We just went out for a drink and…there was a fight. Liam got hit in the head.”

“Jesus. No! Are you there with him now? Can I talk to the doctor? Never mind. I’m on my way.”

Chapter Thirty-Four

BREE

As I walked into the hospital from the parking garage, I was hit with a wave of anxiety, nausea, and absolute fear. I was terrified of what I was potentially about to see. Nothing can prepare you for losing your twin brother. I thought nothing could. But somehow, for the entire six hours and thirty-seven minutes that it took me to get here from Fernandina after receiving that horrible phone call, I’ve been trying to psych myself out for it. While standing in line at the Jacksonville International Airport waiting for my boarding pass to print out, I envisioned walking through the automatic doors of the Critical Care Unit and the smell of antiseptic and death hitting me hard enough to make my hair move. During the rigmarole of disrobing my purse and shoes for TSA to make sure I wasn’t a security threat, I pictured some nurse at a desk asking me if she could help me find someone with a smile, and her face falling when I said Liam’s name, knowing what I was about to learn. As I heard the chiming sound on the airplane informing us that we could remove our seatbelts, I heard the chiming in my head turn into beeping, which turned into alarm bells, which turned into a long, drawn out tone that one could only associate with the sound of the dreaded flat line. Life, as you know it, just done. The heart stopping, the blood no longer flowing, everything just ceasing. When the plane touched down and I felt the jolt of the wheels hitting the pavement of the runway, I was imagining some older gentleman doctor with reading glasses perched on the tip of his nose, trying to give me a sympathetic look as he peered over them at me, telling me that they did all that they could.

Standing in the middle of the throngs of people on the edges of the conveyor belt, all waiting for their black bag of luggage to roll past, I thought about what I would say to my father. How could he ever survive this? How could he ever come back from losing a second huge piece of his heart and soul? What words could I possibly say that could even remotely soften the blow of hearing the horror of your only son’s death? How could I comfort him from thinking that his son died as a result of injuries he acquired during a fight, something that he pushed him, molded him, and trained him to do?

Walking into the hospital from the parking garage, I willed myself to move. I told my brain to tell my legs to tell my feet to unglue themselves from the floor and move forward. I told my heart to recede deep into my chest and to not emerge until it was given permission to resurface. I told my mind to enter a state of numbness, knowing that was the only way I was going to get through this.

As an adult, you no longer have the luxury of looking at the world around you through rose-colored glasses. You’re aware of how cruel life can be and there’s no running from it. There’s no hiding from reality, in its harshest, gravest form. The world we live in is scary. It’s raw and unforgiving. Bad things happen and you have no control over anything.

When Mom died, she didn’t deserve to die. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and our entire life rocked in an instant. It was awful and it was sad, but I adapted. I was innocent enough to still be able to see the good in the world. I was young enough to be able to heal.

I pushed the button next to the elevators to go up to the fifth floor. The second it lit up, I heard the overhead loud speaker erupt. “Code blue, response team to the fifth floor, room 508. Code blue, room 508.” The anxious nausea that I was holding at bay in the back of my throat exploded into a fit of vomiting that I was barely able to get to the trash can for. Thankful that no one else was around to see that, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and tried to compose myself to get onto the elevator. The reaction of terror that I was experiencing hearing that someone, maybe Liam, was dying at that very moment was overwhelming. I was so scared that it physically hurt.

Somehow, I got it together and made my way to the CCU. I rounded the corner and pushed an intercom button on the wall next to the entry door. Hearing a click and seeing the light turn green, I pushed my way in. I stopped at the front desk and was greeted by an Asian girl that looked like she was all of fourteen years old.

“How can I help you?” she asked with a kind smile.

“I am looking for Liam Murphy, please.” I could barely get the words out, unable to function properly from the crippling fear.

“And you are?”

“Bree. Brianne. Brianne Murphy. I’m his sister.”

“I see. He’s in room 514, all the way down this hall on the left,” she said kindly, pointing in the direction that his room was in.

Thank God. He’s not in room 508. He isn’t the one dying right now. I knew it. I would have felt it. I always feel him.

“Thank you.” I walked away from the desk in the direction she pointed me in, wiping my sweaty palms on the front of my jeans. I felt relief when I heard his room number, but couldn’t ignore the sense of dread rising as I got closer to him.

When I got to Liam’s room, the sliding glass doors were open but the curtain was pulled. I stood there for a moment, thinking that a nurse or doctor may be in with him, but then I heard a familiar voice. Drew was talking. I felt slightly guilty, but my curiosity won over my guilt and I listened outside the curtain.

He spoke softly but clearly enough for me to eavesdrop. “You have to wake up, man. You have to be okay. Please, Liam. Oh God, this is all my fault. I was supposed to watch out for you. I am so, so sorry.”

The sound of the slow and steady beep with every pulse of Liam’s heart reassured me before even seeing him. He was alive. Drew was here. Everything might be okay.

“Please, Liam. You guys are all that I have. You and Bree and Pat, you’re my family. You’re like a brother to me. I can’t do this without you. Bree needs you. If you don’t pull through this, it will kill her. Oh God, Liam.”

With that, I cleared my throat, partially to announce my entrance but also because I was actually choked up at hearing Drew’s words. I withdrew the curtain and saw Drew first, sitting across the room at Liam’s bedside, facing me. He was holding my brother’s right hand. The image of these two huge, masculine men holding hands was almost enough to knock me over, but then my eyes found their way to Liam’s face. His eyes were closed, the left one blackened and swollen. His nose was obviously broken and his head was shaved on one side and on the top of his forehead, with stitches in both places. He had a tube coming out of his hand that was hooked up to bags of fluids, but he appeared to be breathing on his own.

I didn’t even notice that Drew had stood up to come over to me until I felt his hand on my cheek. The dam burst and I couldn’t hold back my tears any longer. Sobbing hysterically, I turned into Drew’s chest and his arms enveloped me into a warm, sincere hug.

“I’m so sorry, Bree. I never meant for this to happen. This is all my fault,” he said with remorse in his voice, petting my hair with loving strokes as he spoke.

“What happened? Who did this to him?” I whimpered into his chest.

“We went out to celebrate last night. We were only going to have one drink and then call it a night. He really wanted to come along. I had to convince your dad to let him go with me. I promised I would watch out for him. I promised. It all happened so fast.”

“Go on.” I pulled my face away so that I could look at him while he explained.

“The asshole that I beat in the octagon and a few of his buffoons came into the bar. We were all just standing there laughing, having a good time and they started shit.”

“Was Liam drinking?”

“Yes. We had just gotten our drinks and hadn’t been there long. None of us were drunk. Purifoy and his guys came over to the bar where we were standing and started taunting me.”

“He started the fight?”

“No, things were escalating and we were trying to leave but Liam didn’t want to leave. I don’t think he really knew what was happening. Purifoy called him a retard and I just lost it. I tried to walk away, but Liam wouldn’t leave it alone. He hit him. Liam hit Purifoy, I mean, and the fight just erupted after that.”

“Oh my God.” I couldn’t believe this was all over a stupid bar fight. “Is he going to be okay?”

“They think so. He’s in a coma right now with a bad concussion. They think that he’ll most likely wake up tonight or tomorrow and then they can assess the damage a little better. He put up a good fight, until someone apparently broke a beer bottle over his head.”

The exhaustion and remorse blanketing Drew’s face during the explanation made me ache to hold him. “Where’s my father?” The realization that I hadn’t even spoken to him slammed into me like a freight train.

“I finally convinced him to go to the hotel and shower and get something to eat. He’s been here since last night and hadn’t left at all.”