Title: Brother's Keeper
By: Sarah
Disclaimer: The characters from Boston Public and Boston Public belong to David E. Kelly and Fox television. The characters from Chicago Hope and Chicago Hope belong to David E. Kelly and CBS television. I have no association with David E. Kelly, FOX, or CBS television. I am just writing this for entertainment purposes. No monetary or personal gain has been made by this work.
Lauren walked down the cold narrow hallway of the hospital. It was close to 11 at night, late she was aware but she wanted to do this alone, without distractions from anyone else. For all she knew, this would be the last time she would ever see him.
Since her break up with Harry last year, she had not let herself get too close. He was not capable of giving her the relationship she longed for. A relationship where they knew all about each other, could trust each other, could confide in each other. He wasn't like that, he was determined to reveal as little about himself as possible, about his emotions, and his personal life.
At first she thought that she could cope with it, but as things progressed she realized that she didn't know him. No one knew him. He kept everything in. The only information she had about his family was that his father was doing 20 years in prison for armed robbery. She hadn't known that until one day when she was complaining about his lack of revelation. He gave her that detail about his life, in a matter of fact way, fiddling with a deck of playing cards, "my father's in prison, he is doing 20 years for armed robbery." She never learned anything more about it, such as what the circumstances were leading up to his arrest. He never told her anything about his mother, or the rest of his family.
She entered the room, and found that she was not prepared for what she saw. Harry who was always full of life, was a solitary, lifeless figure, lying in a hospital bed. His left arm was threaded with intravenous tubes leading to what seemed to be a chandelier of medication hanging from a pole behind his bed. The room was silent, save the sound of cardiac monitor and the respirator protruding from his mouth. She approached him, and took his hand, which seemed limp and lifeless. Could he even hear her?
"Don't give up, I know you are stronger than this" she softly whispered to him. She wished she had more to say, remembering the afternoons they had spent together, the time they passionately kissed in the school infirmary, and were caught on tape by Cheryl Holt. For the past year she had tried her best to suppress those memories, but now she could no longer hold back. At a loss for words, she stood with him for five minutes, crying a tiny bit, wishing she had gotten to know him better.
She exited the room. As she walked down the hall, she noticed Steven Harper, fast asleep on a row of waiting room chairs. She knew that he had been at the hospital ever since Harry had come out of surgery, and decided not to distract him.
She then heard an extremely agitated voice yelling, "Its your fault. Do you realize what you have done? If you hadn't involved him in this god dam mess, he wouldn't be here right now. He would be out helping other ungrateful…."
Lauren realized the words were aimed at, Jamaal, the student whose brother had stabbed Harry and decided to stop whoever it was before the matter became more heated. She interjected in a rather angry voice, "Hey, knock it off, this not the place for a sparring match. Leave it to the court to decide whose fault it is."
She took a better look at the man. He was quite handsome, tall and slender, with short dark hair and dark eyes to match. Judging by his looks and actions, he was probably one of Harry's close relatives.
"These people are worthless and thankless. Believe me I know, I worked my ass off for five years in an ER keeping them alive, for no good reason. I thought I could make a difference. Alan Birch, great lawyer, they shot him for $2, and now he is a pile of ash in his former boss's backyard. The kid who did it gets off, because he had a hard life, he deserved a second chance. A year later he gets himself shot. They thought I purposely did him in the ER, by not leaving a clamp in. I almost lost my medical license because of it. And now Harry. He thought he would make a difference, and decided to work with Them. Way to thank him." He said, looking at Jamaal.
The man seemed to be very bothered by all that was happening. However; Jamaal was going through too much right now to have to deal comments like that. She needed to get this man away from him. A nurse approached them all before he could go on complaining.
"Late night visiting hours were over, 15 minutes ago, its time to go," she told them all. The man quickly reacted,
"What the fuck! Doesn't this hospital have a rule that family members get to stay."
"I'm sorry, but our visiting hours are from 8:00-11:00."
Lauren approached him, trying to quickly lead him away from the room, before he could complain anymore, "I'm sure he'll be okay."
While they were in the elevator on their way out, Lauren introduced herself, "I'm Lauren Davis, Harry's ex girlfriend, I work with him over at Winslow High." She had the feeling that Harry probably had not told him about her. He then extended his hand for a handshake "Daniel Nyland, nice to meet you."
She then asked him, "I take it you are a family member."
He replied, "foster brother."
"Oh," she replied with a rather surprised look on her face. She always suspected Harry had messed up childhood, but she hadn't known that he'd grown up in the system.
Danny responded to the look on her face, "I'm guessing you don't know much about his past"
"No, he never really told me very much about himself." she replied, keeping it at that. A dull silence followed, then the elevator door opened.
As soon as they walked out of the elevator, Danny approached her once again. "I'm sorry, I'm not really a racist ass. It's just that I've seen too much happen because of these types of problems." He glanced down, looking tired and depressed, "I've been here all day, this hospital is worse than the one where I used to work! I had to prevent two medical students from using him as an IV pin cushion, and one intern from giving him the wrong dose of an antibiotic"
"Don't worry, he'll be fine" Lauren said, trying to re-assure him as they walked out of the hospital heading for their respective cars. She wasn't really sure if he would be fine, but she didn't have anything else to say.
Before she could get to her car, Danny made a suggestion out of the blue. "Care to hear me vent over a drink." He pointed to a TGI Friday's across the street.
Lauren ordinarily wouldn't say yes to something like that, but Danny certainly could use some company.
They entered the bar and sat down at a table. It was just like any other TGI Fridays, darkened with loud music playing in the background. Needing something to get her mind off all that was going on, she ordered a Bailey's Danny glanced over the menu, which seemed to contain an endless amount of frilly frozen drinks, and asked her "So you are his ex?"
" Ex girlfriend. Yes, I dated him last year for about 6 months. But we haven't seen much of each other this year."
"I know what you mean." He responded, then changed the subject, "Can't they put normal drinks on the menu, I mean frozen oreo margarita."
Lauren was so focused on her conversation with Danny that she didn't notice the waitress who served her drink until she glanced up to thank her. She was momentarily startled to realize that she knew the young woman. Knew her rather well. It was Dana Poole. The student who had kissed Harry last year. And who, very recently, had dated him. Needless to say she was not overly fond of the little coquette.
"Miss Davis, what are you doing here."
"Didn't you hear what happened?"
"No?"
"Two days ago, Harry was stabbed, by Jamaal Anderson's brother."
A look of shock came over Dana's face. "Where was he stabbed, is he going to be okay." She asked, concerned, even though she had not attempted to contact him since his surprise party two weeks ago, when he refused to acknowledge their relationship to his co-workers. He made up a story that they only 'bumped into' each other for coffee. It was their third date!
Danny responded to the attractive young woman, who he knew from somewhere, but couldn't place.
"Who knows. He's comatose. His guts are being held together by the fine embroidery of the folks across the street at East Boston Community Hospital, a hospital well known for being the country's worst. Hopefully he'll be fine, if they don't end up confusing him for a women who has just given birth."
Dana gave Danny a rather shocked look and hugged Lauren, "I hope everything turns out okay." She steered clear of the man Lauren was with. She had seen him too many times at the 'gentleman's club' she worked in last year.
Danny ordered a 'key lime' margarita, and then took a sip of Lauren's already ordered Bailey's. He looked down and said.
"I've known Harry since he was 8 years old. I was 18 at the time, and was scheduled to attend Yale in 6 months. My foster parents, Abigail and William decided to take in another kid. He was just as cute as I was at that age, and had a similar history to my own; his mom had recently died from an overdose, and his dad was deemed an unfit parent.
"When he first moved in, we hit it off pretty well. It was actually kinda nice having a little brother. I made him do things like clean my room, and organize my vinyl collection. I found it fun playing 'homework police.'
"Throughout my first two years college, I would always come back to visit him. He was happy living with them. Abigail was a sketch artist for the local museum, and William was a psychiatrist. Really nice people, great parents. However; during my junior year in college, William was diagnosed with lymphoma. At first they thought they could cure him. He went through all sorts of chemo therapy and stuff, sick every night. Fortunately they were able to get him into remission, or so they thought.
"The summer after I graduated college, he had a relapse. He refused any kind of treatment, no chemo, no radiation, nothing that might make him sick. He passed away just as I was entering medical school. .Abigail went into a deep depression after losing her husband, and it was determined that she was no longer fit to take care of 12 year old Harry.
"At that point, Harry's real dad had supposedly cleaned himself up, and was now at least illegal drug free. So some moron over at the department of child services, decided that it would be okay to send him back to live with his father. It was the worst mistake possible.
"I tried as hard as I could to intervene, to keep Harry on track. But I couldn't do enough on my own. I had so many other things to deal with at that point, the death of my foster father, and my first year of med school. Because of my foster father's extensive medical bills, I was forced to pay my way through, by working at a barbecue joint. During all this I could do little more than watch as Harry began to fuck himself up. When I could, I took him to baseball games, concerts and movies, but eventually he refused to go with me to anything. I tried to enlist my foster mother, in getting through to him, but by that point things had gotten so bad that he was beyond her control.
"By the time he was 14, he was a full blown crack addict, and had pretty much dropped out of school. It was horribly frustrating to see such a bright kid, with more potential than even me, wasting his life away. I was eventually able to force him into rehab one summer. I then decided to sacrifice some of my med school grades to see him every day. I needed to make sure he stayed on the right track."
At that point, the busboy came and delivered Danny's neon green margarita. Lauren suddenly realized some of the reasons why Harry was the way he was. Danny continued his story."
"Harry stayed clean for the next two years, but things weren't easy. His dad had progressively gotten worse, losing job after job, because he would either come in stoned or drunk. He ended up in all sorts of trouble with loan sharks, because of debts from loans to pay for his cocaine. Harry had a wonderful life, wondering if someone would break into his house in the middle of the night, threatening to kill the two of them. Eventually his dad got desperate to the point of holding up liquor stores. One night, he held up one while so high that he didn't even realize there were two cops right outside."
"So that is how he ended up in jail, doing 20 years for armed robbery?" asked Lauren.
"Yes," Danny quietly responded. "It was too much for Harry who was 16 at the time. Not wanting to live in another foster home, he ended up taking to the streets, getting back into drugs and everything else. This time I ended up losing contact with him for about 6 months."
"One day, during my first year of residency, a street kid was wheeled into the emergency room, half dead after OD'ing on god knows what.
"It took me a few minutes to realize that it was Harry. I could barely recognize him. His hair was dyed a horrid green shade, and had all kinds of tattoos and piercings everywhere. They were able to pump his stomach, and get at least some of the junk out of him, but the rest he digested. I always suspected that it was some kind of suicide attempt. Fortunately he got lucky and survived. Not wanting something like that to happen again, I made him an offer. He could live with me, if he cleaned himself up, went back to school, got good grades, and helped keep my place clean. I also got him a job, working at the rib joint that put me through medical school. The arrangement worked pretty well for two years, until he went to college, and I got a job as a trauma surgeon in Chicago."
"Oh" Lauren replied, almost done with her drink, and thinking about ordering a new one.
