.
.
The weeks that followed the massacre were marked with endless testimony, police and investigators alike struggling to get a handle on the things that drove Johan insane: eventually the furor died down and the pop psychologists stopped clamoring for interviews, and all that was left was her brother, pale and frail with what seemed like hundreds of lines coming out from him, breathing through a tube on a ventilator and not opening his eyes.
xXx
.
"His pressure dropped last night," the doctor said. Nina sat, fidgeting with her hands on her lap, while Dr. Tenma listened quietly. "We had to put a groin line in overnight, but the site is dirty and we need to move it up top. Usually it's best placed in the jugular or the subclavian."
"In the neck or under the collarbone," Dr. Tenma said, quietly.
"Oh," Nina said.
"So do we have your permission?" the doctor said. He placed the document in her hands. "The risks and benefits are listed here. Risk of infection, bleeding, dropping the lung-"
"What?" Nina said. Dr. Tenma shook his head.
"It's all standard," Dr. Tenma said. "I would recommend it."
Nina bit her lip, then nodded. Even though Dr. Tenma had performed the surgery, he didn't have hospital privileges here, and so her brother's care was transferred to a local critical care attending. But he stayed, and he sat with her, and he translated when the medical jargon gets to be too much. "It's a safe procedure," Tenma said. He smiled. "I wouldn't worry about it."
Nina nodded, dumbly. Her signature was shaky when she pressed the pen to paper.
"Thank you," the doctor said, and he whisked away the consent form. She watched, swallowing as they pulled the curtains around her brother's room back. They were doing it now, the procedure; Nina watched, stomach-sick, as their silhouettes moved behind the curtain.
xXx
.
His hair was growing back. Even as the court case swirled and the newspaper histrionics rose to a fever pitch, Nina still visited him. Even though he was comatose, his arm was handcuffed to the bed rail, and a guard stood watch outside his door.
It was quiet today, and the afternoon light washed everything in a pale yellow that put Nina at ease. Quietly she moved and let her fingers graze the short hairs on her brother's scalp, downy and fine and unexpectedly soft, stopping only at the ugly staple lines from where they had cracked open his skull.
He wasn't connected to the breathing machine anymore-"He passed his wean," the doctors had said, and Tenma had nodded, pleased-but he still wasn't waking up. Nina pulled up a chair and sat beside him, her hand resting on his forehead.
His lips were chapped. It was another thing that worried her. His lips were chapped and cracked and there was a few days' worth of stubble starting to grow on his chin, which was something she could never imagine her brother having before. Before, Johan was Johan, something like a god or devil, whose appearance had nothing to do with the mundane routines of mortals. In her head, her brother never shaved, never slept, never ate or used the bathroom. Her brother wasn't human, really. At least not in her mind.
But now, her brother was pale and frail and hooked up to IVs and a million other lines, a bag for urine and a bag for excrement hanging at the side of the bed.
There was a knock at the door. "Excuse me," the nurse said. She and another nurse stepped inside and Nina stood, moving out of the way.
"We're just doing our skin rounds," the nurse said. "If you don't mind...?"
Skin rounds.Dr. Tenma had explained it to her. Every day the nurses check Johan's body for evidence of bed sores and skin breakdown, since he's comatose and not moving. "Is it okay if I watch?" Nina said.
The nurses looked up. "We'll be bathing him afterward," the other nurse said.
Nina flushed, but she didn't move. "I'd like to see," Nina said. "I won't get in the way, I promise."
The nurses looked at each other, then nodded. Nina stepped into the corner, averting her eyes.
How could she explain it? Johan had been something larger than life to her, something terrifying and omnipotent. It wasn't that she wanted to see him naked; she wanted to see him vulnerable. Human, like everyone else.
The nurses rolled him. They pulled his gown back and Nina could see the dried blood on his groin from the old line, and the bloodied gauze they used to tape down the wound. The nurses untied his gown and she could see the redness of his buttocks and the excoriations there, probably from being moved too roughly on the bed. Nina's face burned. They rolled her brother onto his back and yanked off his gown completely, tugging against his thin arms and slender hands, the back of his neck rolling slightly. His chest was thin and she could see the hollows of his body in the afternoon light, the pale skin and the spattering of hair just below his navel.
The sight of his penis startled her. Pink and flaccid and bigger than she thought it would be, she looked away and focused on the coarse hairs there and the trail leading up to his navel.
"He's a good-looking kid," the one nurse said. "Too bad he's bug-fuck crazy."
They glanced back at Nina, as if remembering. "Sorry," the other nurse said.
"No," Nina said. "Don't be."
The nurses nodded, grimly.
They began to wash him. Nina watched, her heart in her throat, as the nurses dipped washcloths into a basin of warm water, moving to scrub at the skin of her brother's arms and throat. The water turned rusty with old dried blood, and Nina could see the red marks from where they scrubbed too hard.
His skin was sensitive. Pale skin usually is, Nina thought. He would probably get sunburned easily, too.
xXx
.
She was in the middle of lecture when she got a phone call: "Are you available to talk about code status?" the doctor asked.
Nina stood and cupped the receiver, moving out of the lecture hall. "Code status?" Nina asked.
"In the event that his heart should stop," the doctor said.
Nina's gut bottomed out. Students were laughing and chatting in the hallway; couples were holding hands. Others were studying in the quadrangle under the trees. "What?" Nina said. "Is he okay?"
"Well, from what we understand, you want him alive so that he can stand trial. But as it is, we're not sure he'll ever wake up."
Someone was laughing. A girl, waving to her friends goodbye. "He will need a feeding tube," the doctor said. "But that's something we can discuss in person."
"I need to talk to Dr. Tenma," Nina said.
"So full code for now?"
"I need to talk to Dr. Tenma," Nina said, and she hung up the phone.
xXx
.
There was a paper sign with the words FAMILY MEETING scrawled in felt-tip pen taped to the conference room door, except that the only "family" Johan seemed to have were two police officers, Dr. Gillen, and Nina herself.
Dr. Tenma was out of the country, traveling with the MSF. Dr. Gillen smiled and stood.
"I know I'm just a psychiatrist, but I am a medical doctor as well," Dr. Gillen said.
"Thank you for coming," Nina said, and she sank into the fold-out chairs, suddenly tired.
The critical care team arrived a few minutes later, the attending physician and the two residents in charge of Johan's care. Nina listened dully as they dryly explained the need for code status change, that he likely wasn't going to wake up, and that she needed to choose, let nature take its course and put him on hospice care, or put in a feeding tube and have him transferred to a long-term care facility. "Right now we're feeding him through the IV in his neck. But that can cause long-term complications," the doctor said. He folded his hands in front of him, clearing his throat. "It predisposes him to sepsis, blood infections, all kinds of nastiness that we could easily prevent if we had a feeding tube. But then we have to think, what exactly would the goal be? To keep him alive for trial?"
Nina stared at her hands and at the styrofoam coffee cup on the table.
"He killed my family," Nina said. Her hands tightened around the coffee cup. "You shouldn't ask me these things."
"You're the next of kin," the doctor said.
Nina blinked, struggling to focus. Dr. Gillen pressed a heavy hand on her shoulder.
xXx
.
She walked into his room. His hair had almost fully grown back now, and this time he was clean-shaven, eyes closed and looking as if he were just asleep. Nina pulled up a chair and sat heavily next to the bed, leaning against the bed rail and closing her eyes.
The room was quiet. All she could hear was the sound of Johan's heartbeat on the monitor.
"Today is the last day I'm going to see you," Nina said. She leaned forward and pressed her hand to Johan's forehead. His hair was limp and she brushed away the loose strands from his face, pausing to let her fingers linger against his cheek. "I wasn't lying when I said I would forgive you. But this is too hard," Nina said, and her face felt taut. "I can't be a good sister to you anymore. I don't think I ever could."
The heartbeat was slow, steady. Gently Nina stroked his forehead, then let her hand rest on his chest, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breathing. "They want to put in a feeding tube," Nina said, and she let her hand trail to his stomach, an absent, maternal movement. "They said I had to make a choice. But I don't want you to have all those tubes," Nina said. "I don't want you to die a monster, too."
The monitor kept blinking. Quietly Nina sat, then took his hand. His fingers were limp and cool, and slowly she massaged his palm between her hands.
She fell asleep with his hand clasped to her cheek. Moments passed, and she felt it: the small curling of his fingers around her wrist.
"Johan?" Nina sat up. She searched his face, looking for anything, a sign of wakefulness or purposeful movement. But there was none. His hand was still limp and unmoving. It must have been a dream.
Later, after Johan escaped and the proper authorities were notified, Nina sat down on her bed, numbly. His escape had shocked everyone but her.
xXx
.
The day before he was transferred, Nina watched the nurses wash him again. "Do you want to help?" the nurse asked.
Nina had seen it before. In the ICU, there would be grieving families sitting outside rooms, and the nurses would let the wives of terminal patients bathe their husbands one last time. Nina opened her mouth, about to politely say no, when the nurse handed her a soapy wash cloth and guided her to the bed.
They covered his private parts with a towel, for which Nina was extremely grateful, and they both stepped back, letting Nina take the lead. Her hands dipped into the warm water, stopping to wring out the cloth before placing it on Johan's chest. His skin was cool and clammy and his face was the color of a runny egg, and if Nina looked closely, she could see the lacy network of delicate blue veins criss-crossing just beneath his skin.
Later, Dr. Gillen will ask, "What was it like, when you touched him like that?" and Nina will frown and hug her arms, remembering what it was like, palming the hollows of Johan's body and following the jutting lines of his collarbones.
And she won't say anything, because she won't have an answer.