“I don’t know what happened,” he kept saying. “We were just walking. One second he was standing right beside me, and the next he went down. I called 911 immediately. I rode in the ambulance with him the whole way.”
I wanted to believe him. I tried to organize my thoughts into something that would let me believe him completely and without reservation.
But this was not the first time Brendon had minimized Andrew’s health. A year earlier, he had skipped a follow-up cardiology appointment and told Andrew not to “baby himself.” I had found out about it three weeks after the fact, when Andrew mentioned it casually, clearly not understanding that it was something I should have been told.
The doctor found me at Andrew’s bedside — a woman with tired eyes and a voice calibrated for exactly this kind of conversation.
“We’re still running tests,” she said. “Andrew is unresponsive. His heart stopped briefly, but we were able to revive him. He’s in a coma, and right now we’re focused on understanding why. Every hour matters.”
