“Hey,
Kat. Tell me a story.”
Jace rolls his head
to the side to face me. I’m startled at how his hazel eyes seem
to positively glow against his dark skin, when the rest of his body
is so weak and washed-out, dulled by illness. The bags under his eyes
from sleepless nights, his sunken cheeks and wrinkles in his forehead
from the constant stress, his muscular arms that used to engage in
wrestling competitions, just lying limp on the hospital bed, never to move again... all of
it is so unlike him. Jace is a sickened shell of the strong young man
I once knew.
I’m
struggling to recognize my own brother.
I pull my
uncomfortable plastic hospital chair closer to his bedside, flinching
at the screeching noise against the tiles. Jace just blinks at me,
waiting for a reply.
“Sure thing,”
I say, my voice overly cheerful. I hope he doesn’t notice how
his state unnerves me, but the dark look in his eyes suggests
otherwise. “What story?”
“I don’t
know.” He shifts back to stare at the ceiling again, the pillow
rustling under his head. His voice comes out like a low sigh. “I
just want to remember stuff, get my mind out of this room. And I like
your voice.”
I straighten up in
the chair. He’s right. The least I can do is to get his mind
out of the hell he’s going through.
I clear my throat,
trying to think of a proper story. “Do you want it to be a
memory or made-up, J?”
He doesn’t
respond for a moment, focusing elsewhere. But then his face crumples.
“I...I just tried to shrug, Kat,” he whispers, eyes still
fixed on the ceiling. His lip trembles, but he doesn’t say
anything more.
I know what he
means. Nothing happened. His body hadn’t responded. My eyes
moisten, but I refuse to cry in front of him. It’s hard enough
for Jace to be a new quadriplegic. He doesn’t need me weeping
over him.
With an effort, I
ignore the devastated look on my brother’s face and declare, “I
suppose I’ll go with a memory.”
Jace nods slowly
and closes his eyes tight, the pain of reality weighing down on him.
I take a shaky
breath and wrap my cold fingers over my forearms.
“On your
birthday, there was a really bad snowstorm,” I begin. “Mom
had been in the hospital for about two days, and Dad got Gramma to
come and watch me.”
“You remember
that?” Jace murmurs.
“Yeah. I
didn’t know what was going on. I thought Mom was dying.
Honestly, I thought she had gone to the hospital because her stomach
had exploded.” I snicker at the thought. Jace’s lips
twitch upwards the tiniest fraction. A good sign.
“Everyone
was acting so weird. Happy, but stressed out too. I remember, for the
longest time when Mom was pregnant, I would just watch the snow
falling outside the apartment because she was too sick to play with
me, and Dad was always at work. The day before Mom left, that was
when the snow really started coming down. I think they called it a
blizzard later. I can’t remember. Either way, it helped to keep
me entertained until our parents got back. And when you came home,”
I pause and smirk at the memory. “I thought you were a rat or
something. I didn’t know that babies could come that ugly.”
I laugh, remembering my three-year-old self’s confusion.
Jace opens his eyes
to slits, a small smile working its way onto his face.
“You thought
I was a rat?” he says indignantly. “You’re just
saying that.”
“Nah,”
I say, smiling down at him. “You looked like a wrinkly brown
rodent.”
“I did not.”
“You did,”
I snort, poking him in the lower arm, delighted that his focus is on
something other than his condition.
But to my dismay,
the tiny smile slips from his face as his eyes focus on his arm,
where I had touched him. My own grin falls as I realize where his
thoughts had gone. He hadn’t felt it. We couldn’t even
physically fool around anymore.
Obviously, the same
thought had occurred to him, and his eyes flutter shut once more.
Desperate to keep
his spirits up, I struggle to conjure another memory.
“I was really
disappointed when I found out that you couldn’t play with me
when you got home. In the months before you arrived, Mom had told me
that a new sibling would play with me and that we would be best
friends. But when you got home, you couldn’t do much. You would
just lay there.”
Like you do now.
My breath catches
in my throat. I hadn’t meant to imply that. I hesitate too
long, cursing myself for the comment that could have been taken as an
insult.
Jace’s soft
voice cuts through my self-reprimands.
“But?”
“But...”
I swallow painfully, force myself to relax. “Then she was
right. When you started to crawl, that was when the fun began.”
A nurse pops her
head into the room and check Jace’s IV. He grimaces at the
intrusion, her presence yet another reminder of how he was not okay.
She smiles sadly at me and fiddles with the tape holding the tubes in
his veins. I’m sure it would hurt, with her pulling at his skin
like that, but he can’t feel that either.
When she leaves, he
breathes slowly, then asks in a pleading tone, “What kind of
fun did we have, Kat?”
I say the first
thing that comes to mind. “You had this obsession with dog
food, you know.”
Caught off guard,
Jace opens his eyes in surprise. “What?”
I grin at his
reaction. “Yeah. Remember old Gracie? The schnauzer?”
Jace smiles
uncertainly, my question coming out of nowhere. “Yeah?”
“Mom always
left her food on the kitchen floor, right? When you learned how to
crawl, you’d always make a beeline for the dogbowl, every
chance you got. It was my job to make sure you never got to it.”
Jace raises an
eyebrow, amused. “Really?”
I laugh. “Oh,
sure. But you were so determined, every time I would pick you up from
the kitchen when you almost reached the bowl, and put you back in the
living room, you’d be right back at it again. You were on a
mission.”
Now Jace laughs,
the bright tones of his voice ringing clear through the room. It’s
breathier now due to his injury, but it’s a laugh nonetheless.
“Guess I had
great taste,” he snorts.
I push forward,
thrilled with my accomplishment. “I decided to make it a game.
I was four, so I was getting tired from picking you up over and over.
I wanted to see how obsessive you really were about getting to that
dog food, so I started putting obstacles in your path. Chairs,
pillows, anything I could find. You were really good at going around
them. I hardly slowed you down at all.”
Jace shakes his
head, smiling. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“You did. But
here’s the best part. That’s how you learned to stand,
and eventually walk.”
He turns his head
to me in surprise. “But Mom said I just--”
“Pulled
yourself up on a chair. But you know why you did that?”
“Why?”
“She
had put the dog food on the counter for once!”
Jace laughs again,
louder this time. “My gosh.”
“So here’s
my conclusion.”
“Stop.”
“I think you
were a dog in another life. Would’ve fit you better.”
“Kat!”
His chest heaves with restrained laughter before he calms and relaxes
his neck, breathing hard. He looks me in the eye, still smiling but
serious. “I mean it, no more jokes for now. I’m getting
tired.”
“Oh.” I
had forgotten about his weak respiratory system. While he hadn’t
damaged his spine high enough to need a machine to breathe for him,
he still couldn’t use much energy for feats such as laughing.
“Keep telling
stories, though,” Jace encourages me. “You’re good
at it.”
“Hmm, what
else is embarrassing?” I ponder aloud, before pushing back my
chair and wandering over to the hospital window. The fat snowflakes
dancing down to the concrete below reminds me that Jace’s
fifteenth birthday is next week. My baby brother, so old already.
And paralyzed for
life.
Jace speaks up from
behind me, “There was that one time when you called the police
when I was just sleeping hard. Do you remember that?”
I roll my eyes and
turn away from the window. I glare at his dark head peeking above the
covers.
“That was so
embarrassing, J.”
“You thought
I was dead.”
“You sure
looked like it. And afterwards I wished I was.”
“You could’ve
checked for a heartbeat, just maybe.” Jace grins, his teeth
bright against his skin. “Pulling an all-nighter can knock
someone out pretty good.”
I come over and sit
on the bed beside him. The metal frame squeaks loudly.
“I didn’t
know about that stuff then, you dork. You looked dead, so you were
dead, in my mind.”
“At least you
cared.”
“It was still
horrible,” I giggle.
We smile at each
other for a little while, then lull into silence. A clock nearby
seems amplified in the sterilized quiet of the hospital. Jace shifts
his head, his black curls swishing against the pillow case. I fiddle
with the bedsheet, wishing with all my heart that we could be back at
our house, with not a care in the world.
“Kat?”
I look up from
watching my brown fingers wrap themselves in white cloth. “Mmm?”
Jace’s hazel
eyes have taken on an intensity I’m not accustomed to.
“You’ll
always be here for me, right?”
His face is so
earnest, and I realize that he’s anxious about my answer.
My eyes dampen
without my permission. I usually never cry, but here my body seems to
look for every excuse to. I reach out and grip Jace’s
motionless hand, even though I know he can’t feel it. His hands still feel the same, the muscles still tight around his bones, as if he could still reach out and pinch my nose like he used to.
“Always.
You’re my brother, Jace. I won’t leave you.”
His lips turn up in
a bitter smile. “You don’t feel obligated? Like... I
couldn’t stop you from leaving if you got sick of me. I could
end up alone here and no one would care but the nurses who are paid
to keep me alive.”
My heart feels like
it’s being strangled as I struggle to speak. “You’re
my best friend, Jace. I love you. I don’t care if your arms and
legs don’t work anymore, you’re still my brother. Nothing
and no one can take that away from me.”
His face relaxes a
little bit, and he blinks violently to prevent tears from spilling
over. “I know,” he says, his voice cracking. “I
don’t know why I said that. I know you love me, Kat. I know
you’re my friend. I’m sorry.”
A tear traces my
cheek, and when Jace blinks again, a droplet lingers on his cheekbone
as well. I grab a tissue from the bedside table and dab his eyes,
then my own.
“We’re
in this together,” I tell him firmly, my voice stronger than I
feel. “I won’t leave you alone to deal with this crap.
You were my first friend, you are my best friend, and together we’ll
get you through this.”
“I know,
sis,” Jace sniffs. His lips turn up just the slightest. “You
can be the arms and legs of the operations, and I’ll be the
brains.”
“Okay, sure,”
I agree, then realize what he said. “Wait a minute...”
Jace snickers
softly. We fall silent again, and the wind howls outside the
building. Flurries of snow are carried past the window in gusts, and
the two of us watch the weather serenely.
“Is
it true? Was I really your first friend?” Jace murmurs, eyes
fixated on the white storm outside.
“Of
course,” I respond. “Even if you looked like a rat, I
loved you from the moment you came home.”
“Aw.
Now I want to ask Mom how ugly of a baby you were.”
I
ignore his comment and continue, “What was nice was that you
kept getting smarter, and I could teach you things, and eventually we
reached the point where we were partners. And that was when I knew
you were my friend. When I was able to talk to you without saying
anything. When we are able to talk for hours, like we have been
today.”
Jace
smiles contentedly. His eyes flutter closed, probably from
exhaustion. He’d exerted himself a lot during our conversation.
“You’ve always been my friend, sis. Sometimes I wanna
strangle you, but you make a great partner in crime. We’ll take
on the world someday.”
I
stand up and kiss him lightly on the forehead.
“We
already are.”
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