Chapter 95 Bonus Chapter 23: Whatever It Costs, Save My Son

Chapter 95 Bonus Chapter 23: Whatever It Costs, Save My Son
The day Nathan was injured, Brandon was buying groceries.
Samantha had not had much appetite lately and wanted something light, so he stood in the produce section choosing vegetables. Nothing looked quite fresh enough. He moved on to the fruit display, turning an orange in his hand, when his phone rang.
"Brandon! Something happened to Nathan!"
Samantha's voice was so sharp he almost did not recognize it.
"What happened?"
"Alvin called! They're out of state. There was a landslide. Nathan got pinned under rocks. His head is injured, and he's in some small-town hospital. The doctors there can't operate. Brandon, come home right now!"
The orange fell from Brandon's hand.
He ran.
By the time he got home, Samantha was crying too hard to speak properly. She sat on the couch clutching a wad of tissues, sobbing in uneven gasps. One damp tissue after another piled in her lap, crumpled and white, like dirty snow. The moment she saw him, she stumbled to her feet and rushed over.
"What do we do? What do we do? Nathan isn't going to--"
"No," Brandon said.
His voice was steady.
He was not comforting Samantha. He truly did not believe it. Nathan had been careful since he was little. Cautious. Smooth. Whatever he did, he always seemed to land on his feet. In all these years, Brandon had never seen his son run into anything he could not get through.
He refused to believe this would be different.
He picked up the phone and started calling.
First Alvin, to ask for the hospital address and Nathan's condition.
Alvin said Nathan had been buried under rocks for hours before they dug him out. By the time they pulled him free, he was covered in blood.
The doctors said the bleeding in his skull was serious. They did not have the equipment. They did not have the specialists. They could do almost nothing. If Nathan could be transferred to a major hospital within a few hours, there might still be a chance.
Brandon did not know powerful people.
But he knew people.
So he called them, one after another. Asked if they had any connections. Asked if they could contact an air ambulance. Asked if anyone knew how to arrange an emergency transfer.
With every call, he felt himself age another year.
By the end, he felt as if his hair had turned white.
Four hours passed.
For four hours, Samantha cried behind him. Brandon did not have time to comfort her. All he could do was dial one number after another while the sound of his wife's crying filled the room.
At last, he reached a hospital able to take Nathan.
In Chicago.
Nearly three hundred miles from the town where Nathan lay.
"He'll need to be airlifted," the person on the other end said.
"How much?" Brandon asked.
They gave him a number.
Beside him, Samantha heard it and went pale.
Brandon said nothing.
He took a card from his wallet.
He had carried that card for years. Never took it off him. The surface had been rubbed dull. The corners had curled. Inside was everything they had saved: his and Samantha's retirement money, their savings, even the loan they had taken against the house.
He had planned to keep it for old age.
For Nathan's wedding.
For future grandchildren, maybe, if they needed help with college someday.
He had never imagined using it like this.
"Take it," he said, handing the card over.
His hand was shaking.
He could not stop it from shaking.
Not because he cared about the money.
Because he was afraid.
Afraid there would not be enough time. Afraid the money would arrive and his son still would not come back. Afraid that, after all these years of saying too little, he would lose Nathan before he had said anything at all.
"Whatever it costs," Brandon said. "Save my son."
Nathan stayed in the hospital for two months.
Brandon visited every day. Sometimes with Samantha, sometimes alone. Each day, he drove the same route, passed the same traffic lights, the same stores, the same cracked sidewalks and old brick buildings.
Most of the time, Nathan slept.
The surgery had succeeded, but his body needed time to recover. The doctor said the head injury had been severe. There might be lasting complications: seizures, migraines, memory loss. It would depend on how he healed.
Brandon did not understand the medical terms.
He only knew Nathan was alive.
Alive was enough.
One day, it rained.
Traffic snarled on the way to the hospital. There had been an accident ahead, three lanes squeezed down to one, and even with the windshield wipers beating at their fastest, Brandon could barely see the road. By the time he arrived, it was nearly noon.
He pushed open the hospital room door and found Nathan sitting up in bed, eyes open, staring out the window.
Raindrops covered the glass. The trees beyond it were distorted by water, blurred into deep and shallow greens.
"Dad," Nathan said.
His voice was hoarse.
"Mm." Brandon sat beside the bed. His old jacket lay over the chair, so he picked it up, folded it, and set it aside. "How are you feeling today?"
"All right."
"Did you eat?"
"I ate."
Silence settled between them.
Rain struck the window in hard little bursts, like someone outside kept knocking and knocking, refusing to leave.
After a while, Nathan said, "Dad, how's Alvin?"
"He's fine. Scratches and bruises. He's already out of the hospital."
"Oh."
Silence again.
The rain filled every gap in the room until even breathing felt heavy.
"Dad," Nathan said again.
This time, he did not look at Brandon. He kept staring at the beads of water on the window. He stared for a long time before he finished, his voice so low it sounded afraid of being overheard.
"Do you think she's already--"
He did not finish.
Brandon knew what he meant.
"I don't know," he said.
He did not say no.
He did not want to lie to Nathan.
Brandon had not lied much in his life. He would not start with his son.
Nathan said nothing else. He turned his face back toward the window and kept watching the rain.
It was still falling.
It did not look as if it would stop.
Brandon sat beside him and looked at his son's profile.
Nathan had lost so much weight. His cheekbones jutted beneath his skin, sharp as stones. The line of his jaw had hardened. The slight softness of youth had vanished from him completely. His eyes had sunk deeper, and faint bruised shadows lay beneath them.
He no longer looked like a young man in his twenties.
Brandon sat there.
Keeping him company.
The rain was loud outside.
The room was quiet.
He thought, perhaps this was all he had ever known how to do.
Sit beside the people he loved.
Stay quiet.
Stay.
The day Nathan was discharged, Brandon picked him up.
Nathan still walked unsteadily, one step at a time, as if the ground had turned soft beneath him. The doctor said if he rested properly, he should return to normal in a few months.
Neither of them spoke much on the drive home.
The radio played an old song. Brandon could not remember its name, but the melody was familiar. After a while, he realized Samantha had liked it when she was young.
When they were almost there, Nathan said, "Dad, I need a favor."
"Say it."
"Help me look into that vehicle. I've checked with the police, but they haven't made any progress. I want to try other channels."
Brandon was silent for a moment.
He looked at the road ahead, hands tight on the steering wheel.
He knew this would be difficult to investigate.
He knew they might find nothing.
He knew this might only be something Nathan needed to do so he could keep breathing.
"All right," he said.
He drove Nathan to the apartment and helped carry his things upstairs. At the doorway, Brandon stopped. He did not go inside.
He looked at the apartment, then at Nathan.
Nathan stood in the middle of the living room in a gray hoodie, hands in his pockets, staring toward the window. His back was straight, but there was something painfully forced in that straightness. Like bamboo in a storm, bending and snapping back because it had no other choice.
"Can you manage by yourself?" Brandon asked.
"I can."
"All right. Call if you need anything."
Then Brandon turned and left.
In the years that followed, Brandon searched through more things than he could count.
He searched online for the license plate. Searched news from the route. Searched that stretch of road and that window of time. Searched for any mention of a Ford E-350 someone might have seen that night.
Most results were useless.
He opened every one anyway.
Read every line.
Missed nothing if he could help it.
Sometimes, after midnight, his eyes burned so badly he had to remove his glasses and rub them. Then he put the glasses back on and kept reading.
He called police departments too. Minnesota. Wisconsin. Illinois. Even Iowa and Indiana.
Every time, he asked the same questions.
Every time, he got nothing useful.
Still, he kept asking.