Thursday, August 20, 2020

Untitled story

 Another story! I saw the prompt for this a while ago (the prompt being the first line) and wasn't sure what to write. Break time at work is sometimes productive. 


It's strange, the things you remember as you watch someone die.

My brother lay on the concrete before me, bleeding from his chest, and all I could think about was how angry I had been with him only this morning. Little things, that should've been forgotten long ago, just started popping into my head.
I could hear the paramedics getting more and more worried, discussing things like internal bleeding and punctured lungs. Not many can survive three shots to the chest.
My mind ran through my memories. Panic of my own started to set in as I realized that I couldn't remember the last time I'd hugged him. Plenty of fights came to mind, but never the apology. Maybe I'd never apologized.
Despite the valiant efforts of the medical team, I could see the life leaving my brother. It was almost a tangible thing, like I could reach out and catch part of it, maybe anchor it to him. His breaths were getting shallower and shallower, the beeping from the heart monitor less and less frequent.
I remembered now. The last time I'd actually hugged him was years ago, the same day that our father died. At least with Father there had been time to prepare. Cancer gave warnings like that.
But it wasn't supposed to be this way. My brother was supposed to be there as I died, not bleed out on the cold pavement as I watched. I was supposed to go first. After all, I was older. I came first for everything.
I didn't know when I had started crying, but one of the bystanders noticed me. Why were there so many people in this little alley?
The woman put an arm around my shoulders, saying something I couldn't understand.
Small bits of my brother's life flashed before my eyes, stupid things that I'd teased him about but now regretted. When he accidentally went to the wrong house, instead of his date's. The night of his senior prom when he spilled water all over himself. The time he grew his hair out and I cut it in the middle of the night.
"Do you know him?" the woman beside me asked, her arm still around my shoulders.
"He's my brother," I whispered, the words sounding foreign and wrong in my mouth. He was my brother, but so much more than that.
He was a police officer, a hero, a trait that he could never turn off. I was cruel to him sometimes, but he always forgave me, even though I rarely forgave him. He was my support, even though I never realized it.
I knew the exact moment he left this world. The paramedics had been frantically trying to stabilize him enough to move him to hospital, but the beeping of the heart monitor was all over the place. And then it stopped being individual beeps and morphed into one long tone, the death knell that we all know from murder mysteries and medical dramas. And then silence.
My heart tore quietly inside my chest, a silent scream of mourning, selfishness and pain rolled into one ripping agony. He was gone.

Thoughts on a title?

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