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Chapter Forty


Beep... beep... beep... beep...

"...important that he .... trauma .... the heart wall repair .... paracardium ..."

Beep... beep... beep... beep...

"...expect .... wake up?"

"Whenever he's ready."

Beep... beep... beep... beep...

I slowly opened my eyes. The light in the room was incredibly bright; everything seemed white. My mouth was dry. I couldn't part my lips, they felt hard and cracked. I needed water. My eyes felt glued together and I groaned, shifting slightly before my chest felt like it might explode if I moved much more, and letting my weight drop into the cushioning pillows once more, my mission for water aptly abandoned.

"Brian?" her voice was laced with worry. My eyelids struggled, but finally separated, and I looked up into her face, her hair glowing brilliantly with the sunlight streaming around her. "Brian." Her voice now was relieved.

"Hi," I mumbled. My voice hurt coming out of my throat, which felt raw and my voice was raspy. "Water," I requested, turning my head slightly, trying to find some.

She moved and pressed the nurse button on the side of the bed. "Here, baby," she held a cup with a straw to my mouth and I sipped, feeling drained of energy from the mere attempt at drinking. Like I'd run a marathon. She held the cup, her hand shaking ever so slightly. I moved my hand, though my arm felt heavy, the muscles in my bicep aching from movement, and gently steadied her hand. A tear slid down her face, "You're okay," she whispered.

"I stayed away from that damn light," I mumbled.

She smiled, her eyes glistening. "Good job," she said breathily.

The nurse and Dr. Danielson came into the room at a run, but slowed down the moment they saw I was awake. A smile spread across Dr. Danielson's face as he approached, "Welcome back, Mr. Littrell," he said, pulling his stethescope from around his neck. "Have a good sleep, did we?"

Leighanne was clutching my hand, and I squeezed it tightly, "I suppose I did," I replied.

"Good, good," he said, pressing the cool metal of the scope against my chest. I looked down and saw the incision, all bright red and puckered around staples. No wonder my chest still felt tight. I swallowed. Dr. Danielson followed my gaze. "Don't worry, you'll heal up and it'll fade as time goes by," he promised.

I nodded. I glanced at Leighanne and she had turned her face away from the scar, her eyes filled with tears, biting her lower lip. I tightened my fingers around hers again, "Hey," I whispered, "It means I'm healing," I said, comfortingly.

Leighanne smiled, "I know, I just hate to see you in pain," she said.

"It actually doesn't hurt," I said. "Yet."

"It may feel tighter as the anesthesia wears off more and more," Dr. Danielson said.

"Thanks for the warning," I smiled.

"Deep breath," Dr. Danielson requested. I breathed as deeply as I could considering the staples in my chest. "Good," he nodded. He stepped back, hanging the stethescope around his neck. "So... Mr. Littrell..." he sighed, "Let's talk about your surgery."

The nurse was poking at me, trying to get blood pressure and other vitals as Dr. Danielson moved to the foot of the bed. Leighanne lowered into a chair that was pulled up at my side, and stared up at him intently. "Okay," I said, nodding.

"It went well," he said, "I used a piece of your paracardium - the lining around the outside of your heart - to repair the tear on your septum. The graph I used took well and sounds as though it has fixed the leak that was causing your heart to overwork and swell."

"I'm fixed?" I asked, excitement building up, "You fixed the defect?"

"Yes," Dr. Danielson nodded.

I grinned, and turned to Leighanne, "Can you believe it!" I cried out. She was smiling, but it was through worried tears. "I'm fixed!" I can't even describe the relief that was filling me at that moment. It was like I had been freed of heavy chains that had weighted me down before, like the world had been on my shoulders and it had been finally, mercifully rolled away.

"There was one complication," Dr. Danielson continued, and I stopped crowing for a moment. I expected him to say something that would mean I was about to die within moments. The world started to roll back on. Especially the way Leighanne clung to my fingers when he spoke. I glanced between her and Dr. Danielson's face, nearly unable to breathe.

"What is it?" I asked, quietly, frightened.

Dr. Danielson took a deep breath, "During the surgery, I opted to inspect your heart -- partly as a routine check up that I like to do with my patients and partly because I had a surgical resident interested in specializing in cardio-thorastics in the future at my side and wanted her to see the heart in its entirety -- but on the backside of your heart, we found a large hole."

"A large hole?" I asked, my mouth drying out. "How large?"

He held up his thumb and finger in a circle to indicate the words as he spoke, "About the size of a half dollar."

I stared at him. "What does this mean?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I talked to your family before continuing and got the okay to graph the hole and I patched you up there as well."

"So wait --" I shook my head, "You fixed me twice?"

Dr. Danielson nodded. "And had we not looked at your heart, just closed you up following the scheduled procedure, we may not have found the hole on the back. It didn't show on any of the scans."

"And you just... looked at it?" I asked, "Just... because?"

He nodded. "Brian," he said, "Someone upstairs likes you an awful lot." He pointed to the ceiling, but I knew he meant God.

And I gotta say, despite the fact that I'd been angrily avoiding prayer for quite some time due to all the stress I was going through and blaming God for, I had to agree. A non-routine heart check thanks to the educational need of some random surgical resident and I was going to actually live through this heart disorder that I'd struggled with since I was a child.

It made me wanna go play basket ball.

Basket ball.

I looked around, then looked at Leighanne, "Is Nick here?" I asked. She hesitated, then shook her head silently. I think my heart may have re-broken. When the fellas hadn't shown up before the surgery, I guess some part of me - despite what my Dad had said - had thought that they would arrive while I was under. They were my brothers after all, and everyone else in my family was there. And even if Kevin, Howie, and AJ didn't come, I still thought that at least Nick would be there.

Leighanne gently stroked my arm, and I could see the sadness in her eyes.

Dr. Danielson promised to come back to check in on me in a few, and a nurse rolled me back to my private room, and drew the curtain around me. Leighanne clutched my hand. My mum, dad, and Harold came in from the waiting room and took their seats, my mum mirroring Leighanne's position bedside and the TV flicked on in the far corner of the room and I heard ESPN and my dad and Harold spoke in hushed voices about the Wildcats roster and I started drifting to sleep in the familiar sounds.

The days passed by. Each day I waited for one of the guys to show up or to call and each day I was disappointed by their absence. Eventually, I stopped asking if any of them had tried while I was asleep because of the expression on Leighanne's face when she said no told me that it pained her to hurt me by informing me of their negligence. Eventually, I stopped waiting and I forced myself not to feel the ache when my Dad flipped through the channels and I heard a blip of one of our songs as he flicked by MTV.

When I was released from the hospital, my parents brought me home to Kentucky, and I slept in my own bed. Leighanne had to go back to Orlando, but she called me every night. I asked her if she'd been by the apartment to see Kevin and Howie and she said she didn't think she could look at them after what they'd done to me.

And I wasn't sure I could, either.

When I went into the OR, what had shattered was my life as I knew it. There had been a time when I believed that the friendship I shared with the fellas was the singlemost important part of my life. There was a time that I'd believed that there wasn't anything that could separate the five of us from our loyalties to each other. I'd imagined that our bonds were so tight that we could walk through fire for one another. Especially Nick and I. But things changed when they didn't come to be there for me. Things changed when Kevin didn't protect Nick from Lou, when none of us were protecting AJ from himself, when we weren't standing up for ourselves or each other for our financial situation, when none of the guys cared enough about me or my surgery to help me get there to have it done or to even call to see that I'd made it through.

For all they knew, I realized, I could've died on the table.

It wasn't until June that I heard from any of them.

I was sitting in the living room with my father, watching TV, kind of nodding off in and out, when my mother came in the room, carrying the cordless phone. She hesitated when my father and I looked up and she said, "Brian... it's Kevin."

A part of me wanted to jump up with excitement. The other part made me want to scream and tell her no, that he didn't get to just call me and talk to me anymore, that the opportunity for that had gone. I reached for the phone calmly, though, and my dad struggled out of his chair to give me some privacy to talk. "Hello," I said into the phone.

Kevin immediately sighed deeply, and I could hear the struggle in his breath for words. Finally, he said, "I'm sorry."

I felt the muscles in my jaw tighten and my heart ached. I closed my eyes as my tonsils burned with emotion. "Are you?" I asked quietly.

"Deeply," Kevin murmured.

I stayed quiet because I felt a sarcastic retort building in my guts and I didn't really want to say it. I didn't want to break things more than they already were. But even I know that you can't repair shattered glass. Things never look the same again once they've broken so completely. And I think Kevin was feeling that same weight.

"When are you coming home?" he asked quietly.

"I'll be there to get my things when I can," I replied.

He was silent for a moment as the words sunk in. Then, "Where are you going to go?"

"Leighanne offered me to move in with her," I answered. "We're getting married, so it makes sense."

"Yeah," he agreed.

"And she actually gives a damn," I added before I could stop myself.

"I give a damn," Kevin argued.

"No you don't," I replied, "Not really."

"Yes, I do," he insisted, "I do. C'mon cuz, you know I do."

"I know you feel like shit about it but I don't believe you give a damn," I answered.

Kevin's voice shook, "I was just... afraid... terrified."

"Oh you were terrified," I scoffed, "You were, huh?" I shook my head, "You weren't afraid. You had nothing to be afraid of. You weren't the one that almost died for the tour date at the MGM Grand."

He was silent.

"You aren't the one who was opened up on the table. You aren't the one who was abandoned by his best friends."

"I'm sorry," Kevin's voice was thick and I knew that he was crying.

I swallowed every bit of animosity I had. I don't know how, I don't have a clue how I managed it but I held back, and I dug around deep in my heart and somehow or other I whispered, "I forgive you."

Kevin's tears turned into a deep-throated sob and I felt my throat swell. I stared down at my hands. Kevin doesn't cry. He just doesn't cry, and yet... he was. I shook my head. I didn't want to feel sorry. It wasn't me who needed to be sorry. "The other guys," he said, "We're all sorry."

I shook my head, "They don't get to be sorry; not through you." I answered.

"Let me know when you're in Orlando," Kevin said, "And I'll help you move." His voice was somber.

"Okay," I answered. It was the very least he could possibly do for me.

It was mid-June when I went back to Orlando with Leighanne, much to my mother's worry. Kevin, true to his word, helped me move out of the apartment and to put my stuff into Leighanne's extra guest bedroom. We ran into Howie once and he awkwardly apologized, his voice shaking and twitchy eye winking away. I forgave him, too, and it was easier to forgive Howie than it had been to forgive Kevin.

"I was thinking," I told Leighanne, "That I should get a job to help pay the mortgage." We were laying in bed one morning in the light that filtered through the half-closed blinds on the windows. She had her head resting on my shoulder and her eyes were on the fresh pink scar that stretched across my chest. "Maybe I can go back to school and learn a trade so I can get a real career going." I paused, thinking, "I mean I could learn, like, I don't know. I could become one of those guys - those guys who like install cable and phone lines or something. Do you have to go to school for that?"

She drew a deep breath, "You should get a lawyer," she said.

"A lawyer?"

"You need to go after Lou," she said.

I nodded slowly.

Leighanne sat up, hugging the blankets to her chest. "You can't let him take away your dreams, Brian," she said, "You can't let him win."

"He already won," I answered.

"Not yet he didn't," she said, "Not yet if you don't go install cable and phone wires that is."

"I need a job," I argued, "We need money."

"I need you," she replied simply, "Everything else will fall into line. And I know you, you love performing too much. You need the Backstreet Boys." Leighanne sighed, "Brian, I know they hurt you but it means too much to you. You were willing to risk your life for it a month and a half ago," she reminded me.

"That was before," I answered, "When I believed in what we were."

She sighed and lay back down. We stared at the ceiling in silence. "I still believe in what you are," she whispered.