Tubes & Wires.
A Short Story
I sat in that crisp, immaculate, white room, watching machines breathe for my sister. She never wanted it to be like this, But I can’t I let her go, not like this. Our life was hard. Our dad left when I was two and Filomena was ten. Fia used to say she could remember like it was yesterday. Hearing me crying, going into our parents' room, and finding all our father’s clothes gone. Running into the living room, mother weeping and rocking back and forth. I was screaming in my crib. The apartment dark and cold. It had always been dark, but Fia said on that day it seemed darker, and colder than ever, even though it was during the summer. After that Fia took care of me while Mom worked. When the school year started, she watched me on weekends, and would ask the neighbors during the week. If they were to busy or didn’t want too, Fia would call in sick to school.
When mother would get off work she would sometimes go next door and have coffee with our neighbor Anne. She would say to our mother: “Dara, your daughter is outta school far too much. You need to find yourself a man so you don’t have to work no more.” Mother would smile politely and nod. I never really thought about what it would be like to have a man in the house. When I was four years old, I was able to go to school. Fia knew the kindergarten teacher and told her about how she would miss school to stay home with me. The teacher allowed me to sit in the back of the room, and follow along with the lesson plan. I stayed during the morning and afternoon classes. I learned quite a lot and by the time I was able to be enrolled in school I was placed in the second grade. I missed having my sister in the same school as me; she was in high school then. I liked school, it was fun for me, but Fia had a little difficulty with it.
When I was in the third grade,Mom, Fia, and I went to get our yearly checkups. Fia and I were in great health although the doctor said I might need glasses. Mom told the doctor about her headaches and dizziness and how here eyes sometimes got fuzzy. He said that he would run some test but that it was probably nothing. He called later the next day, saying that she had migraines and to take aspirin, and get more sleep and she would be fine.
Was he ever wrong.
Four months later she collapsed at the supermarket, when the aneurysm in her brain burst. She was in a coma for three years before she died. Fia said she knew Mom wasn’t coming back a week into the coma. She always used to tell me that she would never want to be in a coma. How awful it was, like a sleeping death. Dead in all aspects but not allowed to die. How she would rather die then be kept alive like that.
I watch her now feeling so selfish, but I can’t let her go, not in this way. She might still wake up.
She was eighteen when Mom died; I was ten. She was just old enough to legally be able to be my guardian. She took a job as a maid for a fairly rich family, so that we could stay in the apartment, pay the bills, and keep food on the table. What with raising me, laundry, cooking, cleaning, shopping, and helping me with my homework,She barely had any time for herself. I helped with things but there is only so much a ten year old can help out with. Fia started dating Evan Burns when I was thirteen. Evan wasn’t a bad person; I didn’t like him at all. But he really cared for Fia. About eight months after they had started dating Fia and I got into a huge fight, now that I think about it I don’t even remember what it was about. Well to make a long story short it ended in us screaming at each other. I got so fed up I yelled in her face: “You care more about your stupid boyfriend, than you care about me! I hate you!” I ran into my room and slammed the door.
I heard her crying out in the other room, and about ten minutes later I heard the front door close, Fia had left the apartment. I came out a while later, being very hungry. I went into the kitchen and found a note saying “Going out, back later.” I was so mad at her, I decided I was going to get even with her; I would read her diary. Going into her sparse yet clean room, I saw the book where she wrote down her deepest and most personal thoughts, sitting on her nightstand. I picked it up, as I did that a bunch of papers fell out. Ii knelt down and looked at them. They were letters, from Evan and too him. The first one was from Evan to Fia. It was a letter saying that his father had died and he went back to Canada to help his mother with running the family business. How he wanted Fia to come live with him in Canada, and marry him. There was no mention of me in it at all.
I read Fia’s letter back to him. It said that she was so sorry, but she couldn’t just up and leave. She had work here, me, friends, and other things she had to do here. How she couldn’t leave me here by myself. That I was doing well in school, I had friends here, and I couldn’t be uprooted. She was so sorry, and she loved him, but just couldn’t leave me. I came first in her life. By the time I finished reading this, I was sobbing. The letter from Evan was postmarked over a month ago! How could she have not have told me? All this time she had been holding this inside, while I was being a bratty teenager, she was breaking up for him for me. I realized how close I could have been to losing her, I also realized how much she really loved me. I felt so bad for fighting with her, and so horrible for what I had said to her. I put everything away the way I found it, and went into the living room to sit down on the couch to wait until she came home. We talked for a long time, I told her what I had read and how sorry I was for everything. She forgave me and told me what had happened. Although I had read most of it already.
I now realize fully what my sister gave up for me. She gave up being a teenager, she gave up going to collage, she gave up her boyfriend, she gave up her whole young life for me. Because she loved me. So after everything she has ever done for me, how can I keep her like this? But how can I let her go?
I remember getting the phone call. I was at home, we had talked the day before, and she was coming over for dinner that night. I knew she would be late, she always was, but after an hour she still wasn’t there. I called her cell phone, on the second ring it was picked up, not by my sister, but by a police man. He told me she had been in a car accident, and was on the way to the hospital. I got there as soon as possible and waited for news of her condition. Meanwhile the officer told me what happened.
She had swerved to avoid a deer, hit the ditch on the side of the road in an odd way and rolled her car three times. She had broken her neck and from that day on has been the way I see her now.
I look at all the tubes, the wires, all the monitors. She’s not even breathing on her own. Can I say she’s really still alive? She never wanted it this way. Is it greedy for me to want to keep my sister near me, even if she isn’t really here? I am looking at her seeing the oxygen mask covering half her face. How could I have kept her like this for a year? Looking over at the papers on the nightstand, I pick them up, not letters but forms. Taking a pen out of my purse I start to sign, but I can’t, I can’t let her go not yet. Stepping over to her, I smooth her hair, kiss her forehead, I say one last thing, “I love you Fia.” I finally sign the papers, giving her the dignity she deserves.
Hours later when the doctors remove the tubes, and the wires, and the monitors, I see my sister, my sister the strong, sensitive women, who cared for everyone. I now see my sister for who she was, and I love her. The minutes seem like hours, and at 5:57pm, I watched my beloved sister take her last breath.
I do need to work on spelling, and run-on sentences.
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I think you did a great job making it so the reader could feel the emotions that the two girls felt, and keeping the story believable.
