Chapter Text
Life really fucking sucks. How does life choose who gets to stay and who goes, and when and where and why? Does life just throw a random dart at a board, or is there a greater reason behind all of it? Is life even real? All Kyle knew was that life was an absolute bitch.
“Kyle, she isn’t doing well,” mom tells him a week before the end. He is too far out of this world to even comprehend what she is telling him, let alone recognize the sound of his own sister’s name. Between the alcohol, and the cocaine, and the heroin, sometimes he can barely remember his own name.
“Kyle, it isn’t looking good,” she tells him three days before the end. “You should really try to get here.” At that point, there is a two way ticket already paid, and he figures that a change in scenery (especially the underground scenery) might be nice. So he gets out on the first flight to Pennsylvania and lands, not quite remembering why he had even taken a flight in the first place.
Life had been good before Dad left. Kyle had always tried his best to protect his bright eyed little sister, who was the absolute epitome of innocence. They were best friends. People often mistook them for twins, their dark hair and eyes mysteriously identical. They were only a little more than a year apart, and were the human equivalent of yin and yang. But after his first drink the night dad left, after he took that long, first swig of alcohol, his world became blurry. Literally.
So here he is, standing over his dead sister’s body as tubes are removed from all over. Monitors are turned off, and suddenly, the room is much quieter than it originally was. Mom and dad cry. He isn’t sure if it is real or a hallucination, and quite honestly, he goes in and out of recognizing the lifeless form in front of him.
He looks around the room, trying desperately to remember where he is. The room is small, and filled with wires and screens. There are doctors and nurses and PAs whizzing around, and for a second, Kyle wonders if he is hallucinating being in the middle of a television drama. There is a person in the bed—a dead person, he realizes for a second time. He isn’t sure who it is, even though he swears he knew who it was a minute ago.
“I’m sorry I didn’t get you here soon enough, I’m so sorry,” dad says as he grips Kyle for dear life. But all he can manage to do is stare as his mom strokes her lifeless girl’s hair and holds her hand as the doctor calls an official time of death.
“Time of death, 15:01, cause of death, multiple pulmonary embolisms.”
He isn’t sure what the big words mean, but he knows that something isn’t right when the white sheet covering the bed is pulled over the dark haired girl.
His sister, he suddenly realizes.
“No,” he says, his hand tightly gripping the arm of the nurse who is tying an identification band around his sister's hand. The nurse tries desperately to get him off of her. The sheet covering his sister is shifted, and he catches a glimpse of her face. Suddenly, he wishes he could see those big brown eyes open just one more time. “GET OUT! I CAN TAKE CARE OF HER! GET OUT!” he screams as he is escorted out of the room by two large men. Tears stream down his face as he loses sight of his precious sister.
“Ali, ALI !”