Hank
It was midnight. My father gently shook me and said, “Hurry up, baby, and get your robe on. We have to go.” In a sleepy daze, I stumbled out of bed while he quickly put me in my robe and rushed me to the car. It was cold that night, but after I got in the car, I no longer felt the chill because fear seized my ten-year-old body. My mother was in the front seat, holding my 14-month old baby brother and giving him CPR. I could have sworn that my heart stopped as soon as I realized that Hank was not breathing.
My dad drove quickly to the hospital. So fast, in fact, that he got pulled over by a police officer. I could not take my eyes off of my mother, who was still giving Hank mouth-to-mouth, but I could here the muffled voices of Daddy and the cop. Daddy stepped out of the car for what seemed an eternity, but was probably more like ten seconds, then hurried back into the driver’s seat to be escorted to the hospital by the police officer.
My parents could not have children themselves, so they adopted instead. I was adopted at birth through a private adoption. When I was nine, they adopted a baby boy from birth, the same as they had done for me. They named him after my father, Henry, but we called him Hank.
He was wonderful and perfect, except that he was born with meningitis. He had to undergo radiation and other radical treatments, and in the process, lost his fingers and toes. He could not speak, hear, or see. In 1983, medical technology was not as widespread in treating such diseases, especially in the small city in which we lived. Hank was on Medicaid which paid the hospital bills and other medical needs. There were three hospitals locally, but only one with a neonatal unit with the capacity to care for him, so that is where he was treated for his entire life. On this cold night of November, we had to rush him to the nearest hospital, which was not equipped with a neonatal unit.
By the time that we arrived, Hank had not been breathing for almost ten minutes, maybe longer. The doctors resuscitated him, but they told us we needed to transport him to St. Francis as quickly as possible via ambulance. Unbeknownst to us, St. Francis changed their policy and no longer accepted Medicaid patients. This happened while Hank was in the hospital there, and he had only been home for a week from the hospital when he stopped breathing. St. Francis refused to admit him, so we had to take him to the local charity hospital, which was the second-best facility at the time.
Hank stopped breathing again on the way to the hospital. When we got there, the doctors revived him again, but this time he had been clinically dead, or brain dead, for thirty minutes. He never breathed on his own again. The doctor came to the waiting room to inform us that Hank had passed away. I have never cried so hard or so much in my life. It was the single worst night of my life.
The doctor led us to the room so that we could say our goodbyes. My mother kissed him and told him she loved him as she wept, as did my father. They would not let me touch him or even get close to the bed. He was so blue and purple. He looked so very cold. I begged them to let me hug my baby brother and tell him goodbye, but they shuffled me out of the room and drove me to my aunt’s house.
At the funeral service, I wanted again to say goodbye, but again I was denied. I could not understand why I was not allowed to touch him or get close to his body. He was my brother, I loved him with every fiber of my being, and I was not allowed to say goodbye. It confused and hurt me immensely. When we drove to the graveyard to bury him, I was only allowed to sit and listen to the pastor pray for Hank, and then I was escorted to the car to wait for my parents. I was not allowed to watch as they lowered my brother’s body into his grave.
For years, I wondered why things happened. Aside from questioning why God would take such an innocent being, I wondered why my parents denied me the closure that I so desperately needed. It took me many years to get to a point in my life where I could even utter Hank’s name without bursting into tears. This baffled me throughout my childhood, but I did not get the courage to ask about it until I was a teenager. My mother explained that she thought I was too young at the time and that it might do more damage to me if she had allowed me to touch him or get close to him. I can now understand her reasoning, especially since I have children of my own. A parent’s first instinct is to protect, and my parents thought that they were protecting me. I realize that now, but they also realize that I needed the closure that I never had.