The Unknown Road

65 - Tessa

"CAN WE SEE MATT?" Dad asks, suddenly stopping as the nurse has her hand on the handle to the ICU door.

She looks at another doctor, then the police officer, but then nods, changing direction.

"This way please," she says softly.

I look back at the ICU, knowing Archie is behind that glass, but I let Dad lead me away, not wanting to let go of his hand.

"Take a seat here," the nurse says, depositing us both on a chair outside of a room labelled 'mortuary'. I feel sick thinking about how Matt could essentially be being stored in a fridge, but I keep those thoughts to myself as I grip Dad's hand hard.

"Dad..."

He doesn't respond but he sobs. I put my arms around him.

"My boy... My darling boy..." he sobs, his shoulders shaking so hard he's almost vibrating.

He sobs for almost half an hour before we see the same nurse come out. She has blood on an apron she wasn't wearing before and it makes the bile rise in my throat at the thought that blood might be Matt's, and that they had been cleaning him up to look less harrowing. It makes me think how bad his injuries really were, how much pain he had to endure, and how scared he must have been.

"You can go in now," she says, looking down at herself, pulling the apron off and putting it in a bin behind her.

"I'll give you a moment," I say to Dad, even though all I wanted was to hold my brother in my arms. Dad nods and wipes his nose with his trembling hand. My hands were trembling just as much.

As Dad goes in, I hear him howl a sob and it makes me jump. I hear him drop to the floor, followed by another sob. Having never seen my dad break down about anything, it's heart-wrenching hearing him from outside a door, knowing there wasn't anything I could do, even if I had gone in there with him.

The nurse sits down next to me and puts an arm around my shoulder. I sob and drop my head in my hands as she pulls me into her, and I can't help but latch my arms around this kind stranger. She's the only comfort I have to the fact my brother is lying on a cold, metal table in there, and the only comfort I have to the howls of pain coming through the closed door.

Time passes slowly, and I think I must have nearly fallen asleep from exhaustion of so much crying, because the next thing I see is my dad kneeling in front of me.

"I don't want to go in there," I say, putting my arms around Dad's next.

"Tess, honey," he looks at me sincerely when he pulls away. "It's as if... he's... asleep."

He tries to smile, to comfort me, but I don't want him to. I don't want him to try and make me feel better. My brother, his son, was dead. My brother was no more.

"He looks... so... p-p-peaceful," he stammers as a sob escapes him.

It is a small comfort to know Matt is no longer suffering, but it isn't comforting to know that Matt's final moments were spent surrounded by strangers, probably in an inordinate amount of pain.

"Do you think..." I sniffle to the nurse. "Do you think he suffered?"

The nurse shakes her head. "The paramedics said he was very calm," she says, tears pooling in her eyes. "They said he was only concerned about Archie, and that he was okay."

That made me cry even more. My brother loved Archie more than he did anyone else, as a friend and as a brother, and the fact he was still protecting him, even knowing he was dying, shows just how fierce of a friend he really was.