Our time together that week alternated between a kind of biding quietude and laughing at the dumbest damn things. We didn’t engage in heavy, this-could-be-it conversations; we never handicapped the procedure. We didn’t make what-if preparations. We both knew intuitively what had to be done. Beau simply would not allow himself to plan for the worst. The rest of us took our cues from him.
Dad, as always, called constantly, asking if everything was all right and if there was anything he could do. My answers were almost always the same: yes, and no. He read into those responses what he needed to: in choppy times like these, he, Beau, and I could communicate through a kind of nonverbal frequency we’d developed during previous setbacks and tragedies. Saying much more risked breaking the spell and going to a place none of us wanted to go.
It wasn’t as if we hadn’t weighed more realistic thoughts. They just didn’t need to be articulated right now. It wasn’t like I didn’t know what Beau wanted for me, or that I didn’t know what I needed to do. It wasn’t as if he had answers that I was failing to grasp, or vice versa.
One topic we did discuss aloud was how to handle his running for governor of Delaware after his surgery. Politics are in the Biden bloodstream. The current Democratic governor was term-limited, and Beau had announced the year before that he wouldn’t seek reelection as attorney general so that he could focus on the 2016 governor’s race. The unusual move to leave public service while seeking another position two years later fueled speculation about his health. We all knew the statistical probabilities of his diagnosis, but Beau approached it as if the treatments were going to work, and so we all acted likewise—damn the odds.
We remained more than hopeful about everything all week. That mindset was something beyond superstition for Beau. He made his way to the hospital each day like a pilgrim visiting some sacred site, convinced only good would come of it—that he could be cured. The doctors and staff, most of whom we knew well from his previous two surgeries there, became almost saintlike figures capable of transcendent things.
I recall especially Beau’s fascination with the anesthesiologist, a great guy who had the most piercing blue eyes—eyes the very same blue, in fact, as my brother’s. He intrigued Beau, and Beau talked all the time about the calming effect those eyes had on him. They were the last things Beau saw before the commencement of his two earlier craniotomies, and the first things Beau woke or became alert to afterward. The same anesthesiologist also sedated Beau before MRIs because of his fear of tight spaces. The two of them seemed to share some unspoken understanding as they stared into each other’s identical deep-blue pools.
Back at the hotel, we laughed at the same things we’d always laughed at. I lay in bed with Beau while we streamed movies and TV shows on my laptop, staying there beside him until he drifted off to sleep. We binged Curb Your Enthusiasm and Eastbound & Down, both favorites of Beau’s that traded on the sort of demented humor he ate up. But even then, he laughed a little less than he used to, seemed a little less amused. It became harder for him to follow storylines and maintain a sustained interest.
We didn’t leave the room much—sometimes we ate downstairs at the hotel restaurant, one night we went out to see a movie, and another day two friends of Beau’s surprised him by flying in for a visit. One afternoon we ventured into a nearby western-wear store. It was heartening to see some of Beau’s humor peek through. He picked out a matching set of ridiculously bright red western shirts—they had buttons that snapped, making them easier for him to put on by himself—and he paired them with new blue jeans. I tried to convince him to get a cowboy hat, too, but he wouldn’t bite. He wasn’t that far gone. I bought it instead.
I cherished the hell out of that week. Looking back on it now, I see much of it as a ritual we both performed to prepare us for what was to come.
At first, everything seemed to go well. We hadn’t gotten any post-op word yet from the doctor who performed the surgery, but Beau was conversational and in good spirits in the recovery room. Mom, Dad, and I hung around with him, sealed up in medical scrubs. I stayed behind after our parents left to go to a nearby conference room, their Secret Service detail posted throughout the building.
Having sat in too many hospital rooms with Beau during the past year, I noticed something flashing on a monitor that I knew wasn’t good. I don’t remember the metric it measured, but I do remember it was way too high. The surgeon spotted it the moment he walked in. His face flushed with alarm and he motioned for me to leave the room with him.
In the hallway, he said he was concerned. The surgery was technically exacting, essentially requiring him to thread a needle from the base of the skull and through the brain to deliver the agent into the tumor. Any variance as it passed through tissue could damage a critical component of the brain. He worried, as he put it to me then, “that I
