Substitution
#1 of Substitution (TF Themes)
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Brantley had never liked hospitals. He hadn't even been in one ever since he'd had his eyes done to to correct a refractive error that would have made it necessary to wear glasses, and while those were still occasionally used for fashionable effect, being reliant on them was seen as rather quaint and an almost Luddite-like approach to the possibilities of modern technology.
The corridor in the Sisters of Charitable Hospitality intensive care unit smelled like the hospital he had been to before, a memory that seemed to transcend time and space, while Brantley stood by the window and stared upon the patient room beyond the glass.
The wolf sighed for the upteenth time. His paws clenched and de-clenched once again, a nervous tick that had been underway for as long as he had stood there. It was his spot, really, he had spent many hours in that very same place during the past five days, and every passing moment had made the young wolf feel ever more desperate.
He is gone.
Gone where exactly was hard to tell. If he blinked and concentrated in what he saw, he could still see him alright, lying upon the bed in the intensive care unit, beyond what looked like a plastic tent and wrapped in the hydroplastic blankets and bandages, with tubes and cables circling into this bizarre pearly white cocoon surrounded by medical monitors and equipment that fed nutrients and drugs into the system of the wolf whom could barely be deciphered from amidst all the paraphenalia. The only true sign of life he could see was the cardiac monitor, which showed the bouncing seesaw, and a blinking light that signalled every heartbeat next to the name KYLE, ROMAN emblazoned on black lettering on white background. Perhaps it was the surgically enhanced quality of Brantley's eyes that allowed him to read the minuscule type, or maybe simply that the fuzzy letters formed such a familiar name.
Gone.
He sighed, and the flow of air was intense enough to fog the glass momentarily before the air conditioning got rid of such a blemish. The hospital was painfully clean and void of the usually myriad of scents found from anywhere where many furs congregated, shedding fur and scent as they naturally did. It made him feel dirty, almost, in his unshowered state. It just didn't seem to matter much, personal hygiene, or the rumbling of his empty stomach.
Brantley was waiting, and doing it in this particular location did not make time pass faster. He couldn't imagine being anywhere else, however. It would seem like he was letting him down if he wasn't there, to stand vigil, to show that he remembered, he cared, he loved -
We will never speak again.
He was mere yards away, but they might have as well been sitting on other planets. If what the doctors were saying was true, there was no going where Roman Kyle had already gone.
"Mister Kyle?"
His ears perked at the sound of the question, prompting him to turn to face the white-coated figure, a somewhat perpetually sad-looking cougar lady called Doctor Lansing. She was about fifty, though it was hard to tell nowadays.
"Yes?" Brantley cleared his throat.
"Could you come with me, please?" the woman said.
Brantley gave one further, lingering look upon the cocooned wolf in the room, before he nodded to the lady cougar.
"Alright," he said.
They moved down the winding corridor and entered into her office, which was relatively small, but separated from the hallway by a glass door which she turned milky and non-opaque with the tap of a fingerpad on a control just as they stepped into the room. Brantley felt ill at ease. The office was like the rest of the hospital ward - cold, sparsely decorated, and white, aseptic.
"You may sit down," the cougar said," this will take a moment."
He took the offered seat and sat stiffly on its edge. The cougar seemed more relaxed upon her own saddle chair, of the kind that forced her to always sit with her back in an optimal position.
"I presume you have something new to tell about my father," Brantley decided to cut through any politeness the doctor might have been attempting.
"Yes, I do, Mister Kyle," the cougar replied to the wolf's inquiry. "Our multidisciplinary board has convened and...and we have reviewed the latest diagnostics that have been performed on Mr. Kyle."
Brantley's paws were flexing again.
"Well?" the wolf didn't care that he sounded impatient. He was beyond patience, and anyone trying to spare him from the harsh truths that he had been forced to face during the past few days.
"I am afraid to say that the latest neuroassay does not give a very good prognosis for Mister Kyle ever experiencing what is called a meaningful recovery," the cougar said.
Meaningful.
Brantley swallowed.
"You mean...you mean his brain is as fried as his skin?" he asked bluntly.
The cougar behind her desk seemed unperturbed by the turn of phrase that Brantley had used. Perhaps it was too close to the truth to be disqualified.
"I am afraid that the diffuse axonal damage has proven to be as serious as we feared earlier," Doctor Lansing said. "Functional scans of the cerebral cortex have displayed a high percentage of axonal shear and in the microangiography - "
Brantley growled.
"You're saying that he's not going to wake up," he said. "You're saying it again."
"I am saying, Mister Kyle, that while there was some optimism once his other injuries were stabilized after the accident, the fact is that even maximum corrective therapy has not managed to alleviate the central nervous system trauma that was caused by the accident."
He's gone, Brantley's brain screamed again.The wolf's fingers grasped at the edges of the seat.
"And you have tried everything, right?" he demanded. "You've cooled his body down, you've given all the medicine, right? You've done - is there a surgery or - "
"If this was a focal trauma - that is, if there was a single point of injury to the brain, as if, say, a gunshot wound resulting in penetration to the brain, it would be possible to debride the injury site and attempt to stimulate localized regrowth of the central nervous tissue, in the hopes that these new neural pathways would form to compensate what has been lost, functionally at least. However, since your father's injury is spread throughout his brain - "
"I know that you are saying that his brain is like ketchup!" Brantley barked out. "I'm asking if you can do anything about it!"
The cougar held her calm, even in the face of an angry wolf practically shouting and hissing and spitting on her face. Even her ears remained steady upon her crown.
"The team and I are looking into several therapeutic modalities that might be there to alleviate some of the trauma, but at this point we should be aware that anything we may do is...palliative, at best, Mister Kyle."
I'm going to have to watch him die.
Brantley tried to keep a calm face. He didn't want the Doctor to see how upset he was. It seemed like he'd be letting his father down that way, by breaking down in tears, or getting angry and trying to break things. He'd been a hothead in his teen years, and it had been thanks to his father's calm, firm paw that he'd managed to grow out of it and into what he considered to be at least a relatively level-headed individual. Even with his father lying there tubed up a few doors down wasn't good enough of an excuse for him to break these lifelong lessons.
At least that is how he felt, as his stomach burnt with endless sorrow at the idea of having to let go of someone who had always been there for him, who had made him into who he was, and who had been there for every day of his life, everyone else be damned.
"We have specialists here who may help you to face these issues as they come," Doctor Lansing pressed on valiantly.
I just want my fucking dad back!
Brantley stood up.
"I don't think I want to talk about this now," he grumbled, tail tensely slung between his feet as he stormed out of the room.
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Tears burnt in the corners of his eyes when Brantley slumped against the wall and took deep breaths to try and calm himself down. His cheeks were hot and an unpleasant, crawling itch had spread into his throat.
He had known that the doctors were heading towards telling him all this. He had been to the internet to read what diffuse axonal injury truly meant. He knew that the accident that had violated his father's - his power, good-natured, gregarious, friendly father - beyond the limits of modern medical science.
"Fuck," Brantley hissed. "Shit."
He glanced from side to side to see if Doctor Lansing was lurking nearby in another attempt to console him over the fact that his father had turned into a vegetable to be watered and turned on his hospital bed before some sort of a cruel, untimely death.
He was only forty-five years old.
He IS 45! Brantley reminded himself. Talking about someone in the past tense when their heart was still beating seemed like bad karma. Brantley had never bothered with any god or a deity, or a supernatural order of things to the world, but still seemed cruel. To take a man in his prime and end his life in a simple car accident...
Furs had car accidents all the time. Cars were more safe than ever now that they mostly drove themselves. The fire that had followed...nobody could have predicted that. Maybe something could have stopped it, if there'd been some sort of an automatic extinguisher or -
They would determine the cause, eventually, he knew. Maybe someone would get the blame for it. Maybe some money would exchange paws.
That was not going to bring his father back.
"Are you mister Kyle by any chance?"
Now Brantley growled, and bared his teeth in earnest. Whoever wanted to speak with him was promptly going to be told to fuck off.
"Look - "
It wasn't Doctor Lansing, but a beaver, in a very smart suit in the color of the season, mauve, and with an extremely polite smile upon his muzzle. He carried a suitcase, and wore expensive shoes.
"I am Biff," the beaver said, "I represent the interests of Mister Roman Kyle, to whom you are the next of kin with the durable power of attorney, yes?"
Brantley growled. Of course he'd have to face the lawyers, too. Maybe they were already trying to get the blame pushed onto his father. He'd been driving the car -
"I really don't - "
"I would like to discuss the life insurance policy your father has acquired, and its implications on the future of his care at this moment," the beaver said. "Could we talk for some time somewhere in private, Mister Kyle?"
What Brantley really wanted to do was to go and stand outside his father's sickroom's window. He wasn't in the mood to talk about money.
"I don't think this is a really good time," Brantley huffed.
"From what I have been told, time is of essence in this question," the beaver replied. "I would like to tell you what I have for you, and how this will affect both your father and you, since you hold the power to do medical decisions for him, and this is certainly one that requires your attention."
Brantley shrugged.
"From what the doctor said, it doesn't make a difference," he said, "you wouldn't be here otherwise either, wouldn't you?"
The beaver managed to keep his well-rehearsed smile.
"I think we should talk somewhere private. The relatives' room is nearby, could we move there, perhaps?"
Brantley couldn't see any difference in talking there or in some stupid room where furs went to cry. Who else was there but him, the beaver, and a medical orderly pushing a cleaning supplies cart? Who would even be fucking bothered to hear?
"Whatever," the wolf grunted.
The relative's room was exactly as dank as he had imagined it to be. He'd been told about its existence before, but nobody had managed to convince Brantley to go there yet. He'd preferred the window, outside his father's room. He wasn't allowed into the room itself, because of the danger of passing on infection and the cool temperature within generated by the hypothermic equipment. The beige furniture, the box of tissues, the Bible and the Qu'ran on the little table by the ugly couch did not cheer him up.
Brantley didn't wait to be told to sit down. He didn't. He just stood, while the beaver settled into a chair, put his suitcase onto his lap, and popped it open by running his pads against the scanner on the side.
"I am here to discuss Mister Kyle's policy, and especially Subclause 14a..." the beaver spoke in monologue while he picked a data pad from within the case and tapped onto it, "Preparations and conditions for permanent debilitation..."
Brantley's tail bristled.
He knew that his father always took care of his business well, he had a lawyer to make sure it was all in order. Maybe the beaver was about to say that the insurance policy would only cover his father's life support for a certain amount of days before they would be obliged to pull the plug, once the money ran out. Maybe his father had decided to cut costs in his insurance policy, thinking it would be an unnecessary expenditure. Certainly the beaver wasn't starting to console him by saying how sorry he was to hear about his father's accident. They were going to have to pay big money for it, probably. That's what he was sorry for, really, Brantley thought.
"Your father, Mister Roman Kyle, has decreed in his advance directive for care that in the case of him being rendered unable to make medical decisions for himself, this power will move for his next of kin, his son, Mister Brantley Kyle, that is you."
"I know," Brantley said. "We talked about it, we..."
He knew what he had to say, even if it was a terrifying thing to say.
"We did talk about it and when we drew those papers that meant that we were each other's next of kin, we put in there that neither of us would like to...to see the other suffer."
"Yes...indeed...your policy is included...it is under our company as well."
"I don't suppose that has anything whatsoever to do with my father's life insurance policy," Brantley said, "unless my payments are increasing because he's no longer your customer...after this."
"By no means," the beaver replied. "I am simply here to tell you about the options in regards to the execution of his life insurance policy, and especially the subclause 14c, for which he had made a special advance directive...yes...regards to his wishes for procedures for the continuance of meaningful existence..."
Again, Brantley's ears picked up the word meaningful in the beaver's speech. He had used it in the same way the cougar doctor did before - as the opposite to everything his father was facing right now, hooked up in half of the hospital's equipment in the bed.
"I told you, he doesn't want to be...kept going if there's no way that he can...come back," the wolf continued. Saying it felt almost like throwing up.
And it also felt like giving up. These five past days had all been about giving up.
"But what if I was to tell you that there is a way, Mister Kyle?" the beaver stated.
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