Signs of Life Read online

  The room was brightly lit, harsh, the cacophony from the various machines surrounding the bed assaulting Jeremy’s ears like a jackhammer. A steady whoosh-whoosh sound came from the ventilator that was keeping Brent alive—no, Brent’s body alive. The essence of Brent was gone forever, Jeremy knew, and what remained was only an empty shell.

  He stepped closer and put a shaking hand on Brent’s leg, about the only part of him that was free of tubes or wires or tape. Brent’s face was almost totally obscured by both the thick bandage wrapped around his head and the ventilator tubing sticking from his mouth and the tape holding it down. Really all that was visible were Brent’s nose and chin, a chin that was bristling with blond five o’clock shadow. Jeremy reached out and brushed his fingers over the stubble, feeling the rasp.

  “Oh, babe,” he choked. “Look at you.” Brent’s bare arms, sticking out of a hospital gown, were covered with deep cuts, and there were more on his half-exposed chest, along with monitor leads and wires everywhere.

  There were IVs stuck in the backs of Brent’s hands, but Jeremy was able to thread their fingers together. Brent’s fingers were warm, alive, such a cruel and vicious illusion. Brent wasn’t alive. He would never open those beautiful blue eyes that Jeremy loved to get lost in. He would never smile again, make love, hold their baby… the baby Brent had wanted so much. Jeremy’s knees collapsed and he sank onto the chair next to the bed, pressing Brent’s hand to his lips.

  Time passed in a numb haze as Jeremy sat there, clutching Brent’s hand. Nurses came and went silently as they checked monitors, adjusted things, never intruding. Finally Jeremy felt a touch on his shoulder and he turned to see Jase standing there, his eyes rimmed with weariness and pain.

  “I gotta go report back in, Jere, but I have time to run by your house and grab you some stuff, a couple of changes of clothes, whatever. Okay? Unless I can convince you to go home and get a little sleep.”

  Jeremy shook his head.

  “Okay, bud. I’ll be back in an hour.”

  Jeremy handed over his keys and slumped down in his chair, holding Brent’s warm hand, rubbing his thumb over the backs of Brent’s fingers. It wasn’t like there was a choice to make. Even if Brent hadn’t made his wishes clear in his living will, Jeremy would never subject the body of the man he loved to a torture sentence like this. It was just taking that final step, saying the words aloud that acknowledged Brent was gone forever.

  So he just sat, holding on to Brent as best he could, until Jase came back and set a duffle bag in the corner. He then knelt by Jeremy’s chair.

  “I gotta get back to base, but I’ll talk to my chief, take some emergency leave. When you—when it’s gonna happen—” Jase’s voice trailed off, but Jeremy knew what he was trying to say. “I want to be here for you—afterward, okay?”

  Jeremy nodded, his emotions locked away so tightly that he didn’t feel anything. “I’m going to spend a little more time with him, but I expect to make the decision by morning. I won’t put him through any more of this. It’s not what he would have wanted.”

  Jase’s eyes welled with tears even as Jeremy’s own were dry as a bone.

  “Okay, bud,” Jase said thickly. “I’ll be back in the morning, okay?”

  He stood, kissing Jeremy on the top of the head quickly before striding out of the room.

  More time passed until Jeremy became aware of Dr. Bayless standing silently next to the bed, flipping through a chart. He met Jeremy’s eyes but didn’t say anything, and finally Jeremy cleared his throat, his voice rusty and hoarse as he said, “I’m going to let him go.”

  Dr. Bayless didn’t look away, just nodded.

  “How long will it—will it take?” Jeremy felt like there was ground glass in his throat, and his whole body hurt with a physical pain that was almost unbearable, his skin feeling too tight and hot, heart racing.

  “Minutes” was the doctor’s reply, his eyes compassionate. The ventilator whooshed on, Brent’s chest rising and falling in a hypnotic, terrible rhythm.

  Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, his voice an unrecognizable rasp. “I just—not quite yet. God, I can’t—not yet.”

  “Take as much time as you need.” Dr. Bayless slipped silently out of the room.

  The night passed slowly as Jeremy sat with Brent, not speaking, not able to, his words held at bay by the incessant beeping and frantic alarms that went off periodically, by the violent motions of Brent’s chest as air was forced into his lungs.

  Finally in the darkest hour of the night, right before dawn, Dr. Bayless entered the room again quietly, not speaking, letting Jeremy take the lead.

  “It’s time,” he forced out, his whole body starting to shake.

  After that the room was a quiet flurry of activity as nurses came in and quickly, efficiently, removed the wires and leads from Brent’s chest, IV needles from his arms, pushing the machines off to the side. The ventilator whooshed on as Jeremy climbed into the narrow hospital bed and pulled his husband into his arms, tucking Brent’s bandaged head under his chin, holding him. A pair of gloved hands reached in and disconnected the ventilator hose from the small tube that led from Brent’s mouth into his lungs, and his heaving chest went still.

  Shoes squeaked as people left the room and the lights were shut off, leaving them in blessed quiet and darkness. There was no dramatic beeping that slowed and stopped as the heart stopped beating, just Brent’s warmth in his arms as he slipped quietly away. Jeremy rocked him, the closeness and the quiet finally allowing him to speak.

  “I’ll miss you, baby,” he whispered in Brent’s ear. “And I’ll take such good care of our son. He’ll know you; he’ll know how wonderful you were, how happy you made me every day. God, you made me so happy.”

  Jeremy kissed the top of Brent’s bandaged head, running his hand up and down Brent’s back, memorizing the feel of the man he loved in his arms. He was so warm, so still, like he was sleeping, a deep, peaceful sleep. Jeremy closed his eyes, imagining they were home safe in their bed, impending fatherhood and their whole lives still stretching before them.

  He kissed Brent’s head again, wishing he could bury his face in his thick blond hair, feel Brent’s lips moving sleepily against his neck as he whispered, “Love you, honey,” just one more time.

  Jeremy held him close until he felt a presence beside the bed, and Dr. Bayless leaned in and pressed a stethoscope to Brent’s chest, listening for a minute. He rested his hand on Jeremy’s arm briefly in silent acknowledgment.

  Jeremy squeezed his eyes shut, wondering why he couldn’t cry.

  THE NEXT few days passed in a numb blur of funeral arrangements and phone calls where Jeremy spent most of his time saying comforting things to other people. Per Brent’s wishes he had him cremated, but he deviated from the living will when he had Brent’s ashes interred in a small, private cemetery instead of scattered over the ocean; he wanted a place to take their son to visit his father.

  The plaque set into the memorial wall over the sealed compartment was small, so small there was only room for Brent’s name and the dates of his birth and death. After the short service, Jeremy leaned against the wall and traced the etched name over and over with his fingertip: Brent Nicholas Speer. When they’d gotten married, Brent insisted on taking Jeremy’s last name, a symbolic way of leaving a painful past behind. Brent’s relationship with his family had always been rocky, and when he finally came out to them his senior year in high school, they pretty much disowned him.

  “You’re my family now,” Brent whispered on their wedding night, and when they returned from their short honeymoon, he set to work legally changing his name to Speer.

  Jeremy was tired. He was so tired of the empty platitudes well-meaning people spouted, tired of trying to hold it together for everyone else when all he wanted to do was fall apart. Jase had been rock solid from the morning after Brent’s death until now, never far from his side, running interference when yet another person said, “It’s God’s will” or “He’s
in a better place.”

  Now Jeremy managed to say good-bye to the last of the small contingent of friends and colleagues who had shown up to pay their respects, and finally it was just him and Jase left alone in the small memorial garden. Jeremy traced Brent’s name one last time, unwilling to leave him, knowing it was time to face the rest of his life without the man he loved and wondering how the fuck he was going to manage that.

  “Jesus, this sucks.” Jase’s low mutter was not meant for Jeremy’s ears, he knew, but somehow he heard it, amplified as it was by the echoing stone surrounding them. His eyes snapped to Jase’s, and suddenly Jeremy was laughing, a raw and rusty sound, a tinge of hysteria along the edges.

  “It sucks so bad,” he agreed between gasps, “and that’s the most honest, heartfelt thing that anyone has said to me today. Thank you.”

  Jase came over to him, concern in his eyes, and he wrapped his arm around Jeremy’s heaving shoulders. “Come on, bud. Let’s get you home.”

  Home. His house wasn’t a home without Brent in it. It was just a place where Brent used to be, kind of like Jeremy’s shattered heart. As they drove toward Jeremy’s neighborhood, Jeremy felt the cracks in his composure, opened by his unexpected laughter at the cemetery, start to spread, pain and grief seeping out, demanding to be acknowledged and recognized. Jeremy fought it, a trembling starting deep inside and spreading outward until his whole body was shaking with the force.

  Jase unlocked the front door and pushed it open, setting his keys and sunglasses down on the little table inside. It was such a small action, so meaningless, yet Jeremy had seen Brent do that same thing countless times. The knowledge he would never do it again ripped through Jeremy, and anger boiled up and erupted all over the nearest convenient target.

  “It’s so fucking unfair,” Jeremy hissed as he turned and gripped the lapels of Jase’s suit jacket. Jase opened his mouth to say something and Jeremy shook him, hard.

  “You! You went to a fucking war zone, got shot at, were living in a country full of assholes trying to kill you! You were in the most dangerous place on earth, and yet my husband manages to get his ass killed just two motherfucking miles from home on a goddamn neighborhood street!”

  Jeremy’s voice had risen to a hysterical shout, and he was twisting his fists in Jase’s coat.

  “It’s so unfair! You’re the one that should be dead! Not him!”

  Jase’s face was white, stricken, his eyes full of tears, but his voice was compassionate as he said, “I know, Jere. I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry, man.”

  “You should be dead, not him. Not him.” Jeremy’s grip on Jase’s coat was the only thing holding him up, and when he shoved Jase away, his legs buckled. He collapsed onto his knees, his body shaking as the last tenuous hold he had on his composure snapped.

  “Go away, Jase. I don’t want you here anymore.” He lashed out, his anger at Brent for dying focusing with vicious intent on the man who had been his rock, his unwavering support during the worst week of Jeremy’s life. Yet he couldn’t stop.

  “You don’t get to be here anymore. I wish you had died, not him. Go away!” Jeremy’s voice had risen to almost a scream, and before the hysteria took him over completely, he dimly felt Jase stroke his hair with a trembling hand before the door closed softly behind him.

  Jeremy collapsed onto his side and curled into a fetal position as he sobbed, feeling like he’d never be able to stop, crippling pain and grief making him wish for death himself.

  When the storm finally passed, Jeremy crawled on hands and knees into the bedroom and pulled himself up on the bed, burying himself in the covers, Brent’s pillow clutched to him as he fell into an exhausted sleep. He woke hours later, his eyes gritty and feeling like sandpaper, his throat shredded from crying. The sight of Brent’s reading glasses on the night table next to a paperback novel he would never get to finish set him off into another bout of weeping.

  That happened over and over as Jeremy was assaulted with signs of Brent’s presence: his toothbrush and razor, his dirty clothes in the hamper, his leftovers from their last dinner out together in a box in the fridge. As each storm raged and passed, Jeremy thought he couldn’t possibly have any tears left, but the reality of Brent’s permanent absence always dredged up more until Jeremy was weak with exhaustion and emotional overload.

  WITH THE ruthlessness that had always served him well in his law practice, Jeremy boxed up all of Brent’s things one afternoon, took them to a local donation center and left them without a backward glance. What he couldn’t donate he threw away. His next stop was to a realtor’s office, and he listed their house, instructing the realtor to take the first offer.

  There was one difficult task that Jeremy couldn’t put off any longer, and he made a phone call.

  “Leticia? Can I come over?”

  He drove across town and pulled up outside a small neat house in Chula Vista, a blue-collar enclave south of where he and Brent lived in exclusive La Jolla. Jeremy sat in his car for a while, breathing deeply, hoping he could hold it together and not lose it in front of the woman who was carrying his and Brent’s son.

  Surrogacy had been a long, exhausting process, extremely stressful. He and Brent had gone through an agency, one that specialized in “matching” prospective surrogate mothers with gay couples. They elected to go with gestational surrogacy, where the woman they chose would “grow” and carry a baby created with their sperm and donor eggs, a baby that would not be hers biologically in any way.

  Jeremy remembered the night he and Brent cuddled up together in bed, looking through the profiles and questionnaires of women the agency forwarded to them as potential matches. Brent immediately zeroed in on a young woman with two little boys of her own and a husband who was in the Marines.

  “She has kind eyes,” Brent had said, tracing his finger over the face of the smiling dark-haired woman. “And she’s a military wife, so she’s resilient and strong.”

  They selected three of the women for a face-to-face meeting, and while all of them were perfectly nice, one of them focused almost solely on the fees she would be receiving while another was so painfully shy it was hard to get two words from her. Leticia was warm and welcoming from the minute they met, asking them questions about themselves, showing genuine interest in their lives. She truly was in it to help them achieve their dream of fatherhood, and in the end it wasn’t a hard decision at all.

  Next came psychological evaluations for all of them, several different physical exams for Leticia, sperm count and motility tests for him and Brent. With the all clear given on those, the negotiations started, and finally a contract acceptable to all parties was entered into. After that there was another round of profiles and questionnaires as they looked for an egg donor, finally settling on a young college girl with an impeccable health and family history. She was fresh faced and pretty, and Brent liked her smile.

  Everything was finally in place, but first Leticia had to undergo a so-called mock cycle, where she took the IVF fertility drugs to see how she responded to them. She responded beautifully, her uterine lining thick and perfect, ready to accept an embryo.

  He and Brent had given their sperm samples and then waited tensely to see if any of the donor eggs fertilized. They wanted embryos created from both of their sperm, and to have several of each transferred into Leticia for the best chance of success. Neither Brent nor Jeremy wanted to know whom the “real” father was. They were both going to be a father to the baby and it didn’t matter whose genetic material it was.

  Leticia’s medicated cycle once again resulted in a thick, fluffy uterine lining, so the embryo transfer was scheduled within days. It went smoothly, and finally all that was left to do was wait the required two weeks to see if a pregnancy resulted. That first time there was heartbreak when Leticia’s blood test came back negative. Jeremy and Brent had viable embryos left, so after Leticia’s next natural cycle, they started all over again.

  Another round of IVF, another tense two-week
wait, and then another tearful phone call from Leticia, but this time they were tears of happiness; she was pregnant. He and Brent went to every doctor’s appointment, every ultrasound, were there every step of the way. Leticia and her husband Keith always made them feel welcome, but they tried not to be intrusive on Leticia’s personal life. Leticia texted them every couple of days with updates on how she was feeling and kept them in the loop. Finally the time came where they felt comfortable enough to shop for nursery items, and they picked out a name: Zachary Evan.

  Jeremy leaned his forehead on the steering wheel and took deep breaths as fresh grief ripped through him in powerful waves. Brent would never get to hold this baby he wanted so much, would never get to be the wonderful father Jeremy knew he would have been. No more fucking crying, he told himself firmly. Brent wouldn’t want that, and he needed to be strong for their son.

  He climbed slowly out of his sleek and expensive sports car, reflecting that he needed to get a new vehicle soon, something more suitable for driving a baby around. Brent had teased him about getting a minivan, cracking up at Jeremy’s shouted “Never!” and reiterating all the safety features in the newest-model vans. If only Brent’s car had had side airbags—

  Jeremy pushed those thoughts away, knowing he could “what-if” for the rest of his life and it wouldn’t change anything. He felt like an old man as he made his way up the well-kept front walkway to Leticia’s door, ringing the doorbell and waiting, wondering how Leticia would react to seeing him. He knew she and Keith were aware of Brent’s death, Jase having called the surrogacy agency with the news at Jeremy’s request.

  All of his tenuous control deserted him at the sight of Leticia’s loving and compassionate face, and the swell of her belly that held—oh God. In a few short weeks he could be holding a part of Brent in his arms again. He fell to his knees right there in the doorway and wrapped his arms around her hips, burying his face against her hard protruding belly.