“HELEN!” my mother yelled, and I kept quiet—not because I wanted to, but because it felt like my throat was closing.
My heart ached, and I couldn’t breathe anymore.
“HELEN!”
“Call the doctor!”
“HELEN!”
ETHAN
I was in denial.
I was sure of it, but I preferred to stay in denial rather than accept the pain clawing away at my chest. It was for that reason I stayed in the corner…that I watched. I couldn’t look away. I heard her words, they cut deeply, and exposed me for the fraud of a man I really was. I tried to apologize to her…then when I looked back at them…I noticed something. The angrier she got, the more insults she threw, I could have sworn I thought his finger twitched.
It’s just a muscle spasm. The doctors said it would happen. I waited to see it again, but it was gone. The hope was gone.
“HELEN!”
My eyes shifted to her, and I got up as she started to convulse. I wanted to help, but again, I saw something. This time it wasn’t his hand. It was an eyelid.
“HELEN!”
“Call the doctor!” Aunt Cora screamed, and again his eyelids moved. I wasn’t insane. He was trying to do what I wanted to do—help her.
He was trying to help her!
He was there!
“What happened?” The doctors rushed in, and at their voices, his eyelids stopped.
“Step away from her!” I yelled, everyone’s eyes now on me.
“She can’t breathe,” one of them said, and I didn’t look to see her. I just watched him…and again his eyelid moved.
“Lift her head up. We’ll get the—”
“I SAID STEP AWAY FROM HER!” I snapped, pulling my gun on the doctors as I moved over to his bedside.
“Ethan, what are you doing!? Put the fucking gun down!” Uncle Declan hollered at me, and there it was….it happened so quickly, so suddenly that if I blinked I would miss it.
Moving to his head, I put my hand on his head, brushing back slowly.
“Little brother, if you do not open your eyes I will let her die.”
“ETHAN!”
BANG!
I fired, and doctors screamed. Two of them ducked.
“WYATT!” I called again. “She’s turning blue, Wyatt. She’s going to suffocate, right next to you.”
“HELEN! Help her!” Aunt Cora screamed.
“Didn’t you become a doctor so that you wouldn’t have to go to anymore funerals for this family? She’s going to go before you. I swear to God, I will kill her myself. Three.”
“Ethan, enough!”