A/N: I'm no medic, so I have to say thanks to the great wide plains of the internet, for they enable me to pretend I know what I'm writing about. Any remaining mistakes are mine though, mine alone.


Charlie woke to birdsong outside of his window and for the fraction of a moment, he enjoyed the quiet of the morning. But the memories were ruthlessly pushing up and the smile died on his lips. He closed his eyes against the sunlight streaming in and turned over onto his back.

What a nightmare. Although, it would feel better if it really were a nightmare. Something he could analyze and file away for future reference. Something he could put past him and forget.

No one ever said life was fair. Or easy.

Charlie burrowed deeper into his blankets, listening to the soft sounds of his father busying himself downstairs in the kitchen. He should get up, really. Take a shower, go downstairs and help with the breakfast preparations.

The fact that his brother was fighting for his life right now didn't mean that his own life had stopped, did it?

It somehow felt wrong, but Charlie did get up after all.

"Hey, Dad," he said twenty minutes later as he sat down at the table, smiling at the array of food covering the surface. They all had their coping mechanisms and his father always had receded to cooking when times were dire.

"Dig in, Charlie," Alan came in from the kitchen, another plate of French toast in his hands. They probably could feed an army with all that.

Charlie poured himself some coffee and fingered a slice of toast onto his plate, watching his father from the corners of his eyes. "Did you call the hospital?"

"Yeah. No change."

Alan got up again, went to fetch milk and the syrup he forgot earlier and sat back down. He looked like he'd aged over night and Charlie suddenly lost any appetite he might have had.

"Dad?"

Their eyes met and Charlie saw all his worries mirrored tenfold and more. How hard this must be for his father, he could only guess, but what he saw in those brown eyes, eyes that usually were fond and vibrant, scared him.

Alan finally looked away and reached out to ruffle Charlie's hair, just like he'd done countless times before, a gesture that never grew old even if it wasn't always appreciated as he was growing older. Charlie held still and let him, closed his eyes and thought back to those days when having the strong hand of his father touch him like that still made him feel as if nothing bad could ever happen.

"Eat up, Charlie. I want to try to talk to the doctors."

Charlie sighed. And ate. The toast was good, actually, but his appetite didn't return.

XOXOX

Dr. Hamilton was a lanky man in his early fifties with a shock of reddish brown hair turning gray at the temples. Charlie remembered him from the night before.

"Mr. Eppes. And Professor Eppes. My daughter is a social science major at CalSci. She loves your Math for non-mathematicians lectures."

They shook hands and Charlie smiled meekly. "Yeah, those always seem to be a favorite."

Dr. Hamilton glanced at his watch. "I have about half an hour before I have to be at a meeting. Why don't we go to my office?"

They walked down the hallway and entered a small room off to the right. Dr. Hamilton rushed in to clear the two visitor chairs, deftly depositing the papers he'd picked up onto his desk which was already filled to overflowing with more folders and stacks of paper.

"Sorry, I never seem to come around to clean up this mess here."

He pulled both chairs out and over to the small side table and went around his desk to get his chair. Charlie looked around the cramped and cluttered office and had to smile. Order and science obviously never inhabited the same universe, no matter at which field you looked.

"Okay," Dr. Hamilton rubbed his hands together and looked at them, "how detailed do you want to do this?"

"Dr. Hamilton," Alan said and leaned forward in his chair, "that's my son in there."

"Okay," Dr. Hamilton nodded, "detailed then."

"And in English, please," Charlie added.

"Alright. First of all, Don is doing as good as he possibly could at this point. His vitals are stable and the EEG shows significant brain activity. He's in there, hanging on."

Alan heaved an audible sigh.

"But, he's still not responding to any kind of stimulus or breathing on his own."

Dr. Hamilton leaned back in his chair and pulled a plastic model of the human brain out of the bookcase behind him, putting it onto the table between them.

"I assume you both know what this is, right?"

They both nodded.

"The brain is surrounded by three thin layers of membranes," Dr. Hamilton cupped his palm over the model to show, "with the so called dura mater being the outermost layer. What happened with Don is that a vein in the space between the dura mater and the next layer, the so called arachnoid mater, ruptured. Blood started to collect there, which caused the pressure inside the brain to rise."

Charlie felt the urgent need to swallow.

"When we performed the surgery last night," Dr. Hamilton continued, "we removed the blood and repaired the blood vessels. That reduced the pressure inside his brain already, but we're also giving him diuretics to control that situation."

He turned the model around slightly.

"Now, it's the location where the bleeding occurred that is a bit tricky. As you can see here, the brain consists of different lobes and the injury was around here."

He pointed to the left side of the model, where the different colored parts met and fingered his own side of the head, about an inch over his ear and a little towards his temple to underline his explanation.

"Which means?" Alan asked, voicing the question Charlie just couldn't bring over his suddenly very numb lips.

"Which means that different parts of his brain could be affected by this. I understand Don is right-handed?"

They both nodded.

"In right-handed people, this part here, the left frontal lobe, controls speech and this part, the left temporal lobe, controls the understanding of written and spoken language. It also incorporates hearing, language and verbal memory. And this part here, the parietal lobe, controls the muscles of his right side."

"So," Charlie croaked, "that means he..." He couldn't continue.

Dr. Hamilton smiled, pushed the model further towards the middle of the table and leaned back in his chair.

"Professor Eppes, unlike mathematics medicine isn't always an exact science, especially neurology. Most of what we do is guesswork, informed guesswork, based on years of research and experience, but guesswork nonetheless. We've done extensive MRI imagery yesterday and again this morning and there are small lesions in all those three parts of his brain, which means that all those functions I pointed out could be affected. But then, there were also small scars indicating prior lesions in other parts of his brain, which tells me your brother tried to test the thickness of his head before and those probably didn't affect him at all."

Alan chuckled a bit and scrubbed his palm over his cheek. "Don used to play baseball."

Dr. Hamilton nodded. "That would explain that."

He stood up and put the brain model back into the bookcase, then turned back around and leaned onto the back of his chair.

"Until Don wakes up and we can test his neurological and motor functions, we can't say anything for certain. But all of this is a possibility. He could have speech problems, trouble finding or understanding words. It could range from problems with certain words up to complete loss of his speech. His hearing could be impaired, in the worst case scenario resulting in complete sensorineural hearing loss. He could have problems remembering faces and names of objects. Yes, he could have muscle weakness in his right side, spasticity even. I'm pretty sure he'll have some form of amnesia, concerning the events leading up to the injury or from the moment he wakes up onward. He might very possibly develop a seizure disorder due to the scarring. But given the right therapy, most of that is reversible or, in case of the seizures, treatable."

"But it's possible that he'll be mentally disabled," Charlie whispered.

"Yes," Dr. Hamilton nodded, swiveled his chair around and sat back down. "It's also possible that he wakes up with a whumping headache and little to no impairment whatsoever."

Alan, who'd remained almost stoically silent up to now, looked up. "Really?"

"A couple of years ago, a construction worker walked into our emergency room after an accident, a three feet piece of rebar impaling him from here," Dr. Hamilton tapped his index finger to the right side of his chin, "to here," he indicated the top of his head. "Gave our nurses and residents quite a scare. And he left the hospital ten days later the same way he'd entered it, walking unassisted on his own legs, with very little lasting effects of that ordeal. Trust me, anything is possible."

"What about the coma?" Charlie asked, feeling faint and just a little bit more sick to his stomach than he really thought he could stand.

"As I said earlier, there's significant brain activity and while I don't want to downplay the severity of the situation, I'd say the prognosis is fairly good. Yes, if we disconnected him from the ventilator at this point, he probably wouldn't breathe on his own. But in most cases of coma after a trauma to the head, it's basically a self-preservation measure of the body. The brain just shuts down everything as far as possible to give the organism time to heal. I've seen quite a few cases like this before and I'm certain that with the right amount of outside stimulus, the chances he'll come out of it will improve."

"Stimulus?" Charlie asked.

"Sit with him, touch him, read him the sports section of the paper. Let him know you are there. Visitation in ICU is usually restricted to ten minutes out of each hour, but in cases like this I'm always willing to extend that because the patient benefits from it. To start off, I'd say 30 minutes every two hours and we'll see how that works."

Alan nodded, rubbing his palms across his thighs. "I'll sit with him."

Dr. Hamilton smiled and stood up, motioning to them to do the same. "Okay. Now let's see how our patient is doing."

XOXOX

They'd shaved his head.

It wasn't really surprising, given the fact that they had to perform brain surgery--cut his head open, Charlie thought with an inward shudder--but he just realized it now, as he sat down by Don's bedside. And wondered how that could have escaped his attention last night, when he'd been in here the first time.

His father had given him the first turn and had excused himself for a moment to take a walk around the hospital grounds. Coming to terms with the situation.

Charlie let his eyes roam over the part of Don's head that wasn't covered by bandages and even though it was a shocking sight, he couldn't help but smile. Don would freak out about it. His brother, whose often disputed vanity had always been a subject of lots of brotherly ribbing, who even dressed up to spend a lazy day on the couch and hardly ever went unshaven, would certainly throw a fit if he could see himself in a mirror now.

But he couldn't and with that, the humor floated away just as fast as it had appeared. Charlie reached out and gently grasped Don's hand, stroking his thumb over his palm. It was warm and dry and unmoving.

"Hey, bro," he whispered. And immediately ran out of words.

His mind was still preoccupied with the different scenarios Dr. Hamilton's words had provoked. He continued his soft stroking and followed the lines on the heart monitor going up and down, watched the numbers beside it change. Tried to ignore the fact that the green line at the bottom measuring Don's respirations was far too regular because a machine breathed for him.

And as his mind started to slow down, he realized that it didn't really matter. Whatever the outcome was going to be, it wouldn't change how he felt for his brother. And he also realized that it had been a long time since he'd last told his brother exactly that. He rose again, the vinyl cushions of the chair squeaking, and bowed down to press his lips against Don's temple, right under the bandage.

"Hey, Don?" He had to swallow. "I love you, you know?"

And he sat back down and the machines kept on beeping, lines continued to snake over the monitor screen and the respirator hissed on, forcing oxygen into his brother's lifeless body. And Charlie cried.

XOXOX

Somehow, he'd left the ocean behind. But the tranquility had stayed with him, enveloping him like a blanket.

He felt relaxed, like on a lazy weekend at home in his childhood.

The scent of freshly cut grass permeating the air.

The smell of charcoal and steaks wafting in from the back garden, riding on that soft draft that always swayed the kitchen door just a little bit, making it squeak ever so slightly.

It needed oil. It always did.

XOXOX

Charlie stared at what he'd written onto the chalkboard, a very exotic attempt at the Poincaré conjecture, and decided that this was not even close to what he usually could come up with when he put his head around a problem, nor that it rivaled in any way what Grigori Perelman had already offered as a solution.

Poincaré and all the other Millennium problems hadn't been Charlie's focus for a long time. In fact, he'd left the quest of solving any of them pretty much behind when he'd abandoned P vs. NP. This wasn't so much about solving them, this was more about juggling his neurons and keeping himself on his toes. Proving to himself that if he really invested his energy and knowledge, he might be able to do it.

At the moment though, even mathematics didn't matter a lot to him.

"Hey," said Amita, slowly walking into the room from the hallway, a soft smile on her lips.

Charlie looked at her and continued playing with the piece of chalk in his hands.

"Amita, have you ever worked on something, something that you thought was profound and important and then you looked at it closely, and suddenly it seemed totally trivial? Nonsensical? Unimportant?"

She stepped up to him and leaned against the desk, her shoulder slightly touching his.

"How is Don?"

The focal question. Charlie shrugged his shoulders and released his breath in a big sigh. "Dr. Hamilton says he's improving, but truth to be told, I couldn't tell the difference. It's been 4 days now and...," he let the rest of the sentence trail off.

"This is pretty hard, I know."

And Charlie wondered if she really knew. If someone really could know and understand unless you were in this situation, unless you got up every day to face the uncertainty, forced to continue with your daily life because all you really could do was stand at the sidelines and watch life have its way with someone you loved. And pondered all the possible outcomes, relentlessly, each day anew, because reality was there, right in your face and you just couldn't ignore it.

"I was just heading out for lunch," she said.

"I... I have an appointment with a student in half an hour," Charlie said and unfolded his legs from under him, slowly sliding off the desk to stand beside her. "And afterwards, I'm off to the hospital."

"Okay," Amita said and turned towards him, her eyes searching his. "You know where to find me, right?"

And he felt the compassion, the will and longing to understand, and he had to smile. "Yes, I know. And thank you."

And Amita left and Charlie stepped up to the chalkboard and wiped Poincaré away. He had no place in his life right now.

XOXOX

"Professor Eppes," Dr. Hamilton smiled as he looked up from his paperwork and leaned back in his chair.

"Please," Charlie said and pushed himself off the door frame, "call me Charlie."

"Alright, Charlie." Dr. Hamilton got up, stretched once and walked over. "I'm Phil. And I look at you and see a question in your face."

Charlie chuckled a bit at that. He really liked Dr. Hamilton and his straightforward and uncomplicated manner.

"Actually, yes, I have." He walked further into the small office and leaned back against one of the chairs. He would have sat down, but the seats were covered in paper and file folders. "I was wondering if you could explain the possibilities of Don's situation to me."

"You mean, what happens in case he doesn't wake up?"

"Yes."

"Okay," Phil Hamilton perched himself onto the edge of the desk, "let's do this bluntly. Door No. 1, he dies. Which is the least desirable solution and also the one with the smallest probability at this point, but you wanted to know. Door No. 2, he remains in a coma, which is only slightly more desirable."

Charlie swallowed and nodded.

"Then there is door No. 3, the so called persistent vegetative state. Think Terry Schiavo. Awake but not aware. He'd have about a 50 chance to come out of that within the first 6 months. He might also proceed to door No. 4, which is the minimally conscious state. He might react to voices, might press your hand back, he might utter words out of his own volition. He might even be able to feel, neuroscience isn't quite that far to say this with certainty yet."

"Okay." Charlie regretted a bit that he'd asked, but it did feel better to have a bigger picture.

"And then," Hamilton leaned back and fished a long strip of paper off his blotter, "we have this, which is Don's latest EEG reading and when I look at that, I feel tempted to say that your brother is only a couple of steps away before he can rattle the knob of door No. 5. Consciousness. He's busily working on his comeback, it seems."

He spread the paper strip between his outstretched hands and Charlie looked at the different zig-zagging lines that snaked over the paper.

"I'm not going to lure you into the illusion that Don will simply open his eyes in a couple of days and be back to his old self." Phil Hamilton looked at him over the paper. "That only happens in bad movies. He will go through all the different states of awareness, all those vegetative states I described earlier and that process could take up any time frame from a couple of hours to a week or two. But given the rate he's been improving up to now, I'm leaning more towards days."

He turned the EEG reading around and looked at it for a moment before he folded it back together and flipped it back onto his desk. "I've been in to check on him earlier and his reflexes are already coming back and he started to breathe a little on his own as well. We've adjusted the ventilator, so it only breathes for him when he doesn't."

Charlie let the words sink in and a distinct sense of relief began to settle into the pit of his stomach. "Thank you, Phil," he whispered and smiled.

"Nothing to thank for. Does Don like music?"

"Yeah, he does."

"Bring some CD's by. Something he likes to listen to. We have a small CD radio here and this way, your father doesn't need to talk himself hoarse."

Charlie thought about his father, who was sitting by Don right now, just like he'd been sitting there for the last 4 days. Whenever he could. Whenever he was allowed to. Reading the newspaper aloud, talking, telling stories. Always keeping contact with Don, a hand on his arm, sometimes on his cheek or forehead.

Making sure that the love he felt was always tangible.

"Yeah," he said, "I think that's a great idea."

XOXOX

Meticulous, Charlie thought and smiled. Yeah, meticulous was a very fitting description. He drew in a deep breath, taking in the very distinct smell of the air around him and closed his eyes. He'd never before realized how deeply the sense of smell and emotions were connected.

Charlie hadn't been to Don's apartment for a long, long time. And Don didn't spend that much time here either, it often seemed. This here was a place to sleep, a place to be alone if he needed to, but it wasn't a home in the true sense of the word. Home still was the old Craftsman house, the family home. Charlie's house. And yet, this place bore the imprint of Don, so clearly that he could smell his brother's presence here.

He walked through the rooms slowly, pausing here and there to look closely, to touch and to wonder.

A rinsed and upended mug on the drainer in the kitchen, the coffee jar with a spoon balanced on top beside it, the kettle a little further to the left. Everything set out and ready to be used.

The alphabetized CD rack in the living-room. The book shelf, with paperbacks and hardcover books neatly arranged so they all fit in, the spines aligned to form a straight line. Everything sorted by interest.

The closet in the bedroom, with his suits hanging behind the first door, the ties arranged on the rod inside the door, sorted by color.

All items of daily use were laid out in a way that made it possible to use them with the least amount of effort. Don's meticulousness sprang at him, wherever he looked. But it wasn't obsessive-compulsive, there were other items of lesser importance lying around. Magazines covering the coffee table. One sleeve of a shirt hanging over the top of the hamper. A still unpacked box under the bedroom window, one flap bent open.

Charlie sank onto the edge of Don's bed with a smile, because Don's meticulousness reminded him of how they were different and yet akin. His living and work spaces weren't overly tidy, not the way Don's were. But he put a lot importance into the correctness of his work, he needed the order of it, needed meticulously compiled results, needed structure.

The mirror image was slightly askew, but it was a mirror image after all.

Charlie's eyes strayed over the furniture, over the small bookshelf by the dresser and he suddenly recognized something that immediately caught his interest. He leaned over, pulled the wooden box from the topmost shelf and set it down beside him onto the bed.

Don's treasure chest. A wave of memories washed over him and his smile widened.

Don's treasure chest was an old cigar box, marred by the years, the brass hinge and clasp slightly corroded. When it entered Don's possession at the age of 9, it had become the container for those items he deemed especially valuable at that age. His baseball cards, snail-shells or funny looking stones, later photos and letters. And Charlie could see himself as if it were yesterday, sitting cross-legged in front of Don's bed and slowly working his way through the contents of the box, because this treasure chest had always had an almost magic appeal on him. He couldn't remember anymore how often Don had caught him red-handed, but he could remember how Don had always scolded him and what little effect it had had on him. He'd always gone back to take a look after a while again.

When Don was around 16, Charlie had even found a small stack of marijuana in there, but he'd never told that to anyone.

And Charlie wondered what now, as an adult, would be of so much importance to Don that he kept it inside this treasure chest. He reached out slowly and opened it. A seashell was lying on top, followed by a number of different sized envelopes. He flipped through them and an awful trepidation started to build inside his chest. Each envelope was addressed to someone, the names written out in Don's neat handwriting. Dad. Charlie. Terry Lake. Kim Hall. Will. DNR. The next envelope was slightly bigger than the others and had a return address embossed into its upper left corner.

Wilbert and Sons Funeral Home.

Realization crashed into him and took his breath away.

He'd heard of this, had talked about this with Terry years ago when she still lived in Los Angeles. The fact that some law enforcement people put their affairs in order, just in case something happened to them on the job. That they made funeral arrangements and wrote their will and letters to loved ones, took matters in their own hands to make it easier for the family.

His hands trembled as he went back, traced his name on the second envelope. Pulled it out and then, because he needed to, opened it. He unfolded the single sheet and stared at the words.

Charlie,

you are holding this in your hands, so I assume that I've encountered that one situation I couldn't win.

I really hope that none of the following is news to you and that at some point in the past I've told you this in person. If not, I hope you can forgive me and that knowing it now will make things a bit easier for you.

I'm proud of you, Charlie. You are a very special person and the best brother I could have wished for. And I love you, I always have and I always will, no matter where I am. It may not always have seemed so, I know that, but it's the truth.

Stay who you are, buddy, okay? And be good.

Don

His tears were flowing freely now and Charlie let them as he folded the paper again and put it back into the envelope. He let the letter fall back into the box and flipped once again through the pile. He had no right to read the others, but he had a pretty good idea of their content now.

Then he reached the last one again. DNR. He didn't know anybody with those initials and curiosity started to toy at him. And then, another association with those letters sprang to the fore and an iron band suddenly constricted his chest.

No, Don. Tell me you didn't...

He grabbed the envelope, tore it open and pulled the sheet out. And Don had, in dark blue ballpen on pale yellow paper, meticulously scripted:

I request that in the event my heart and breathing should stop, no person shall attempt to resuscitate me.

This order is effective until it is revoked by me.

Being of sound mind, I voluntarily execute this order, and I understand its full import.

Don Eppes

TBC