A Prologue

I listened to the pitter-patter of the rain hitting the numerous windows as I watched the nurses hurry on their way to tell people of good news or of the bad. I watched as families cried over loved ones that had passed away just seconds earlier and I saw families rejoice as their loved ones returned to them unharmed or fixed up. I saw people come and I viewed people go. All the while I sat in the same seat wondering what type of news I would receive. The doctors had only come out twice to see us. Once to tell my mother and father that they were giving him some type of medicine to make his blood thin, so as not to clot. For if something did clot up in his head region there would be more severe trauma than there already was. Another time was to inform my parents that the medicine that they were giving him was making him lose too much blood and they would have to stop giving it to him soon.

Now I saw the door open and my heart sank into a deep pit in my stomach. What if it wasn't the news I wanted to hear? What if it was more horrible than the first? The doctor came out with his turquoise smock and looked at me with a grimace, not one that he wanted me to see, but I saw it nonetheless. I heard voices around me... I could hear the wailing voice of my mother crying, “Is he going to be all right? Is he going to be all right?” I could see my father sitting in a chair beside her with his head resting on his hands. I could almost hear his thoughts, “My son, my first-born child. Is he going to be okay?” As the doctor advanced toward my father, his head slowly moved up out of his hands.

“Sir, I’m afraid we have some bad news,” the doctor, in the turquoise smock stated. “We’ve put a lot of blood into your son. The head trauma is very bad. We can’t keep giving him the medicine to thin his blood. His right leg is mutilated, we will have to amputate it.”

My father just stared at the doctor. As if to say “why are you putting me through this? How can you not save my only son?”

My mother, who was sitting beside my father, started to cry. Even though she was a stepmother to this boy, she still loved him with all her heart. She had practically raised him. His mother never cleaned his face or washed behind his ears. She looked up to the doctor and questioned, “Is he going to be all right?”

“We’re not sure yet. We’re doing everything in our power to keep him alive. I will keep you updated,” and with that the doctor turned away and disappeared into the room where my brother was desperately clinging to life.

As my parents waited for more than an hour to get the doctor's update again, I looked out the window to watch cars and trucks drive by on the highway. How can everyone just go about their everyday lives when my brother is in here dying? The world as I knew it was about to be shattered and they didn’t even recognize it. Why did this have to happen to me? Will he be all right?

Finally after many minutes passed, the door swung open again. The familiar doctor stepped out and said “You might want to go see him now... We have to stop giving him the medicine, we’ve already given him four liters of blood. We just can’t keep doing it.”

My mother looked at my father with the most painful look I’ve ever seen upon her face. My father rose slowly from his seat and followed her and the doctor into my brother’s keep.

I saw that my brother was full of tubes. An IV here, an IV there... There was a tube down his throat. Blankets were covering up his body so we couldn't see his recently removed leg. If you looked long enough you could see where the blanket sunk where it should not have.

My father took my brother's hand, tears rolling down his eyes. I had never seen him cry before. My mother looked more horrified than a ship of sailors looking at a fifty-foot wave about to overturn their boat. I was there to watch.

As I looked at my brother I heard a voice in the back of my head. It was faint at first, but then it got louder. “He... He is not going... He will die.”