I’ll take care of him for you

“I’ll take care of him for you” is Dominick Birdsey’s promise to his dying mother, Ma, that he will protect Thomas. The words offer her reassurance at the moment of death, but they also bind Dominick to a responsibility whose cost he will later question. Their force lies in that double meaning: a loving pledge that helps Ma let go, and a burden Dominick comes to understand as part of his own entrapment.

The promise at Ma’s bedside

Ma had been dying for several days, outlasting predictions while her family grew exhausted. Near dawn, after she had thrashed and tried to remove her oxygen mask, she became quiet. Ray had stepped away briefly to make a work call. Dominick leaned over Ma, stroked her forehead, and recognized that she was conscious. He told her he loved her and thanked her for what she had done and sacrificed for the family; then he said the words she had been waiting to hear: “I’ll take care of him for you, Ma. I’ll make sure he’s safe. You can go now.”

The promise is addressed to Ma, but its object is Thomas: her cherished “little bunny rabbit,” as Dominick describes him when recalling the pledge. Ma died sometime in the next hour. Dominick understands the timing as meaningful: once she had heard that Thomas would be safe, she could let go. The expression thus functions not merely as an assurance about the future but as a final act of care between mother and son. It gives Ma permission to die, while placing Dominick in the position of the person charged with carrying her care forward.

A pledge that becomes a burden

Years later, Dominick revisits the promise while speaking with Dr. Patel. He says that, after reading how his grandfather had drowned the monkey, he began to think about being trapped by a promise, as his grandfather and Papa had been. He remembers that promising to protect Thomas was the last thing he said to Ma before she died. The reflection recasts the bedside words: what had sounded like a freely chosen commitment now feels like a bond from which Dominick cannot easily release himself.

That sense of entrapment is sharpened by his account of what followed. Dominick blames himself for Thomas’s long-term stay at Hatch, saying that he fell from a roof, missed Thomas’s hearing, and then Thomas was committed for the long term. Dr. Patel challenges the certainty of this self-accusation. She doubts that Dominick’s presence at the hearing would have changed a course that was probably inevitable, and argues that his pledge—however merciful and well-intentioned—has exacted too high a personal cost. In her view, it has contributed to his unhappiness and ill health, and even to a brief suicidal period the previous fall. She also believes Ma would not have wanted him to sacrifice his own well-being in a futile effort to secure Thomas’s.

Dominick does not accept that conclusion without reservation; he answers that it is debatable. The exchange preserves the difference between the promise’s moral intention and its practical consequences. His vow expresses love and a desire to protect Thomas, but it cannot guarantee Thomas’s safety, prevent his institutionalization, or make Dominick responsible for controlling every outcome. Dr. Patel’s response offers a limit to the obligation, while Dominick’s hesitation shows how difficult that limit is for him to inhabit.

Love, rivalry, and the feeling of coming second

The promise is also entangled with Dominick’s history of feeling less loved than Thomas. He insists that Ma did love him, but says she loved Thomas more, and especially cherished the quality in him that Ray hated. In Dominick’s memory, Ma’s names for Thomas—her sweetheart, her cuddly bunny rabbit—mark a tenderness that is both genuine and painful to the twin who believes he came second.

Dominick later admits that part of him hoped the promise would finally put him first, if only for a minute before Ma died. He connects that hope to the phrase “Number two in a two-man race”: even after Ma has been dead for four years and Thomas is locked away at Hatch, he still experiences their relationship as an unending competition. The vow therefore carries a private wish alongside its stated purpose. It is a promise to protect Thomas, but also a moment in which Dominick hopes to be indispensable to Ma.

The expression’s lasting meaning

The expression returns in Dominick’s later telling in closely related forms: he recalls promising to keep Thomas safe and repeats the assurance that Ma could go. Its recurrence keeps the deathbed scene present within his subsequent account of responsibility. The words offer a clear, intimate moment of comfort, yet their repetition also reveals how Dominick measures himself against a duty that no single person can fully fulfill.

The promise does not resolve the conflict between caring for Thomas and preserving Dominick’s own life. Instead, it gives that conflict a sentence he can return to: a declaration made in love, remembered through guilt, and repeatedly tested against events beyond his control. Its significance rests in the gap between what Dominick promised Ma—that Thomas would be safe—and what he could actually ensure.