Seven Minutes

TW: car accident

The hospital hallway is white. The floor’s slapped with the occasional red and brown tile, the grout the lightest gray, though nobody’s looking except for Creed.

“Hello?” he yells, stumbling down the bright corridor, light glaring off the walls. “Hello, excuse me! How do I get out of here?” There’re double doors in front of him, and he hopes they lead out, because he’s been in here for too long: he doesn’t know how he got here, only that he’s not supposed to be here right now.

Before he reaches the doors, they slam open, and he leaps back with a startled yelp, tripping over an untied shoelace.

As he straightens, a cot is formed by the blinding light, bursting into existence, wheeled too-fast down the hall by shouting orderlies.

Creed tries to scramble out of the way too late, and the cot hits him right in the gut.

With a sickening lurch of his organs, it glides right through him.

Creed doubles over, gasping for breath, feeling as though his innards have been pulled out of him after the cot, then snapped back into his body as if held by rubber bands. When he shoves himself upright, he wobbles, nauseous, in time to see his parents surge through the doors, framed by the light, screaming, tears streaking his dad’s cheeks.

“Mom?” Creed yells, but she runs right past him, after the orderly and the cot.

“That’s my son!” Dad booms, his voice cracking, and Creed cries out in shock as his dad runs right through him as if Creed isn’t even there, making Creed stretch and snap back into place again.

“Dad!”

Nobody so much as turns.

Terrified, Creed dashes after them, following the shine of perfect tile on the floor reflecting the fluorescent lights above illuminating a straight path down the hall.

The cot’s already in a room, a nurse holding open the door as someone speaks to him, a doctor’s shoes clicking fast on the floor behind them—Tak, tak, tak.

“Hey! Hey, Mister! What’s—” 

Creed reaches toward the nurse, and is left staring in horror as his hand goes right through the man’s arm.

“I’ll get it right away,” the nurse says, ignoring Creed, and rushes away through him, making Creed clutch his chest as the door swings shut, only catching the barest glimpse into the clean room: his parents wrestled away from the bed as more nurses bustle about, dragging around emergency equipment.

“What’s going on?” Creed cries, putting his hand out to push the door back open. 

His fingers and wrist slip through cool plastic like water, and Creed backs up so fast he almost trips.

When the doctor reaches the doors, pushing them open, Creed rushes in after her, glancing into the hallway.

The lights buzz, dimming slightly before returning to their full intensity.

There’s a figure out there, tall, jogging toward Creed, more familiar as they get closer: terrible pink shorts (“They’re salmon, for fuck’s sake, get out of my room! I don’t need your commentary on my clothes!”), a cream polo shirt (“I’m not an old man—Fuck off—Creed! I’m going to tell Mom to make you get out of my room!”), and brown Oxfords (“I have a date with Zhang after school! Stop making fun of me or you’re walking home.”).

“Trev?” Creed gasps, catching his brother’s arm as Trevor slips in through the closing door, too.

Creed can feel him, touch him, but just barely, his fingers dragging through Trevor like Trevor’s made of thick cobwebs, and it makes Creed step back, alarmed.

“Creed,” Trevor says, his face melting into relief, and Creed sobs in gratefulness, lunging forward and twisting his arms around Trevor’s back as best he can, twining his hands together, burying his face against Trevor’s chest. His brother is cold to the touch, swamped by shadows even in the clear lighting of the room; his clothes smell faintly of gasoline and burned rubber, but Creed wipes his face dry on Trevor’s shirt anyway, comforted by familiarity even when he has to yank back after sinking too far into Trevor’s sticky body, Trevor’s hands light on his back, cupping his shoulders.

“Trev, what’s going on? Mom and Dad are here, why are they here? I keep phasing through stuff, and nobody can see me, Trev, nobody can hear me, I keep shouting and shouting—”

“Stop, Creed.” Trevor’s face is pained.

Creed freezes, tear tracks still drying down his cheeks.

“I can’t change it,” Trevor whispers. “They’re not going to hear you. I’m sorry, Creed. I’m so, so sorry.”

Creed takes a step back. “What—what do you mean?”

“Do you remember what happened?”

“What are you talking about, Trev?” Creed demands, his voice going embarrassingly high and reedy with nerves as he takes a step back from his brother and the dead aura that hovers against his pale skin. “Stop being all weird and shit, you know I hate that!”

“What were we doing before we got here, Creed?”

“I don’t know!”

(Mom was banging on the door—“Creed, last warning! Get your butt out of bed, Trevor’s driving you to school today, you know I have to take your father to the airport!”)

(He was eating Froot Loops. Trevor stole the bowl. “Trev!” “We gotta go, asstown! Why are you always so slow?” “You just want pre-class make-out time with your lame-ass boyfriend! That’s not my problem! Make out in class or something!”)

(The storm door slammed shut, the garage grumbling as it opened. It was gap-toothed: Mom had already left with Dad. “Double-check if the door is locked, Creed!”)

“Why are we here, we’re going to be really late for first hour, Trev, and we’ll get an unexcused absence, and Mom and Dad are going to yell at us—”

“I crashed the car,” Trevor whispers.

“W-what?”

“I crashed the car,” Trevor repeats, just as quiet, his voice lost in the echo of the hospital: shouting, nurses calling to each other, the doctor talking to their parents, doors opening and closing back out in the hall. He isn’t looking at Creed when he says it, but rather down at the floor, his throat bobbing, his voice broken. “Do you remember? We were on 81. You were telling me about the trans guy in your grade—”

(“…I dunno, it’s just… he’s Elliott,” Creed mumbled, staring out the window, sure his cheeks were neon red. “He’s hot. Why the fuck does gender matter? Can’t I just think he’s hot?”)

(Trevor laughed at him.)

“—and how you think you might be bi, and you were so excited about it—not about being bi, but just about Elliott—and I thought that was so cute, that happiness on your face, and I was looking at you, and when I looked back at the road, a pickup truck had run the red light at the intersection and was heading for us and I-I-I tried to speed up to get out of the way, but that only made it worse.”

(Creed yelled, sticking his hand in front of Trevor’s face as he flipped off the giant gray Ram barreling toward them, easily twice the size of their Prius—)

“You crashed?” Creed’s voice wobbles. “But you’re fine, right? We’re fine. That’s why we’re both here, and everything’s fine, and—and—”

“I’m dead, Creed,” Trevor whispers.

Creed stares at him. Trevor looks normal: his skin—even if it is a little gray, that’s just from shadows, Creed is sure—is smoothed over sharp cheekbones; there’s a faint smattering of acne on his jaw; and his nose is still crooked from when he’d broken it at three years old, trying to carry baby Creed and instead face-planting into the floor from the unexpected weight. Trevor’s clothes are neat and clean, creased from how they’d been folded in Trevor’s drawers that morning.

Creed laughs, too high-pitched and hysterical. “Ha-ha, Trev! You can cut it out now. Great prank. How’d you get Mom and Dad in on it, how’d you make me be able to go through stuff? I guess it doesn’t really matter. Seriously, we have to get to school—”

“It’s not a joke,” Trevor says, his voice cracking, and he takes Creed’s hand to lay it on his chest, Creed’s fingers no longer passing all the way through him but instead only sinking a couple of inches past his clothes and skin before stopping.

Creed stares at him, smiling, waiting for that next heartbeat to come, to pulse under his fingertips.

His brother doesn’t break the mask. He doesn’t grin and go, Got you! or Haha, we’re dead, yeah right! Come on, let’s blow this popsicle stand, we can get ice cream at Cub after school and watch a movie.

There’s nothing under Creed’s hand.

No heartbeat.

No rise and fall of Trevor’s chest as he breathes.

No tremble as Trevor laughs and tells him it was all a trick.

Shaking his head, Creed snatches his hand away. “You’re—you’re not dead,” he insists. “What is this?”

“It’s the E.R., Creed. You’re in the E.R.”

Creed skitters around his brother, partially through him, and Trevor doesn’t try to stop him as Creed rushes forward, frantically taking in the beeping machines, the nurses bent over the cot, his parents shouting and the doctor trying to calm them down.

He should’ve been able to hear himself—the breath rattling through his throat, or his pulse in his chest, or the slap of his sneakers against the floor—but there’s nothing at all, nothing except the noise other people are making.

“Trev?” he whispers, trying to steel himself, and he leans over the bed next to a nurse, his fingers curling against the cot’s short railings.

It isn’t Trevor.

It’s him.

He’s lying there, his eyelids bruised purple, his body still and pallid in the clothes he’d put on that morning: jeans and a black NASA shirt, Gabby’s blue-and-black friendship bracelet still twined around his wrist. An oxygen mask has been strapped around his face and a nurse is propping his chin up, now, setting a brace under it while another nurse sterilizes a bleeding gash on his forehead before taping down gauze there. An EKG machine beeps slowly with each faint heartbeat that Creed can’t feel in his own chest.

He backs away, choking. “Trev? What is this?”

“That’s you, Creed,” Trevor whispers, almost inaudible.

Creed whirls to face him. “No, it’s not. I’m here, alive, I’m not dying!” he shrills desperately. “I’m not, I’m not! My heart’s still going on the monitor—look, Trev, I’m still breathing!” He rushes back over to his bedside and searches frantically for the faint up-and-down of his chest to reassure himself that it is, in fact, there, then whips back around to face his brother. “Where are you? Where’s your—your—” He can’t say, body.

Trevor’s face is a torn mess of emotions, too-easily read—pity, self-loathing, sadness. “They brought me in dead. I’m in a room down the hall. There’s nothing to see there. They already put a sheet over my body.”

Creed shakes his head, feeling the hot tears welling at his eyes. “No!”

“I wanted to see you,” Trevor says, taking a step forward.

“Why!”

Trevor searches his face, his lips pressed to keep from crying, and he manages to keep the tears from falling because he’s always been stronger than Creed—faster, smarter, better. “I wanted to see if you were still alive,” he whispers, and maybe it’s the defeated way that Trevor says it—like he thinks Creed is already gone, like him, that makes Creed break.

“I am!” he screams: he needs it to be true. “I am, I am, I am! Someone, please, look at me, I’m right here!” When he grabs a nurse’s arm, Creed’s hand slides easily through skin and bone and muscle, and he sobs, trying to touch another person, anyone.

“Creed,” Trevor says softly.

Creed shakes his head, tears making everything blurry, lunging back for the bed and trying to seize his own hand, his own shoulder, to shake himself into waking. “No, no, no, this isn’t right!”

“I’m sorry, Creed.”

“Sorry isn’t helping!” he screams, and Trevor flinches. “Why are you here, jackass? Why are you here, if you’re dead! You can’t be dead,” he cries, his voice cracking over the quickening beeps of the EKG and nurses beginning to talk louder.

Trevor’s face crumples like tissue paper.

“We can’t be dead. What about—what about Zhang? And what about Mom and Dad, and what about Auntie Elbert, and Grandpop coming over from Florida for your graduation; graduation’s only in a month, Trev! And all your friends are going to be there, and Mom and Dad already said that I could have Rufus when you moved away for college, ’cause dogs aren’t allowed in the dorms at Oberlin—”

“It’s too late for me.”

“No it’s not, it’s not, wake up, Trev, get up, get up—”

“Stop, Creed,” Trevor whispers again—Creed doesn’t know when he’s gotten so close, but he’s wrapped up in Trevor’s arms before he can complain, and he sobs against Trevor’s chest, his hands fisted in Trevor’s shirt, and Trevor doesn’t even complain like he always does that Creed’s going to leave wrinkles in the cotton. His shirt is soft in Creed’s grip, his skin cool and wax-smooth where the two of them touch.

The EKG begins to whine, high-pitched and nasal.

Their dad is shouting raggedly.

“You can’t leave me here,” Creed whispers, muffled, his voice giving out. “I don’t wanna be alone. It’s supposed to be the two of us. It’s always been the two of us!”

Trevor winds his fingers in Creed’s hair. When Creed looks up, Trevor’s eyes are shining with sorrow. 

“Of course it has.”

“Then stay!” When Creed blinks, a tear tumbles down his cheek, splashing noiselessly to the tile below. “You have to stay with me, Trev, we’re brothers, I can’t be a brother if you’re not with me!”

Trevor’s face is torn with regret. “I can’t stay, Creed. I’m already gone.”

“Then why are you here!”

“Because I love you.”

 “I don’t care!” Creed yells. “If you love me, then come back! We’re supposed to be a family, and alive, and—and—”

“Seven minutes, Creed,” Trevor says, taking Creed’s hand into his own and pulling his fist apart gently so that his fingernails no longer bite crescents into his palm or trap Trevor’s shirt. Trevor’s grip is steady. Firm. “You get seven minutes after you die where you get to watch your whole life played back. I got bored in the first ten seconds. I didn’t need to see a toddler bumbling about, or all the bad decisions I made as a kid, or even three years ago. So I came to see you. I wanted to say I love you. I wanted to say goodbye.” 

“No, no, no,” Creed moans, shaking his head, crying now, barely jerking when someone runs through them with defibrillators. “You can’t go. You can’t leave me here alone! You gotta come back home with me.” 

“I can’t go back,” Trevor says softly, letting go of Creed’s hand carefully, like it’s something delicate, to be protected. “Maybe that’s penance for what I’ve done. I should’ve been a better big brother—I should’ve kept you safe. But maybe there’s still a chance for you.”

“I don’t wanna stay without you!”

“Then come with me,” Trevor whispers. He’s fading: he hadn’t looked like a ghost before, he’d just looked like Trevor, solid and warm, but now Creed can see the faint outline of the wall behind him: the tile and the paint, machines, a nurse ripping apart the shirt on Creed’s body on the bed and readying the defibrillator. 

“But—what about everyone else?” Creed sobs, desolate. “Who’s going to feed Rufus, Trev? He’s waiting for us at home.”

“Then stay.”

“That doesn’t help!” Creed cries.

The defibrillators jolt his body, on the bed.

“I know,” Trevor says hoarsely. Parts of him have disappeared completely, leaving him like a jigsaw puzzle missing pieces. “And I wish it weren’t me that was making you choose.”

When Creed turns his head, he sees the way Dad’s fingers are twisted in Mom’s shirt. He thinks of Elliott’s smile, a little crooked; of playing DnD with his school club, the IB physics teacher DMing their current game (Night at the Museum, but in space!); of running track with Jake and the rest of the team them going home, tired and aching, collapsing on his bed with dark blue rocket ships on it, Rufus wiggling up onto the sheets with him, his great furry tail wagging so hard it whistled through the air.

“I don’t wanna go,” Creed whispers. He can feel himself throbbing, distantly, so intensely he’s shaking.

Trevor nods, his cheeks shining with wetness. “I know. I wouldn’t, either, if I had the choice. You should stay, then. Tell everyone I’m sorry. That I love them.” He’s almost gone when Creed twists to look at him, erased in some places, his face a mess of ill-placed shadows as he sinks into the darkness.

“But what about you?” Creed barely manages to say.

“I’ll be fine,” Trevor says with too-much confidence. He’s always been confident. “Don’t worry about me! We’ll find each other again, after this.”

“Promise?” Creed whispers. His chest aches and, distantly, he can hear Mom keening.

Trevor’s smile is cracked and more than a little broken, the last part of him that Creed can see. “I promise, Creed.”

Creed tries to smile back, but he can’t—blackness sinks atop him as he weeps, painting out his vision, and he chokes on the sudden breath in his chest, screams with it, sobs with it.

In his chest, his heart stirs.

B-dm.

Creed, someone sobs. Creed, my baby, my baby.

B-dm.

B-dm.

And he breathes.

When he opens his eyes, the ceiling is white.