I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 06

I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 06

In the end, the paramedics still had to pry Ethan away from me by force before placing me into a body bag.

The moment the zipper clicked shut, Ethan let out a desperate, guttural howl.

It sounded as though every ounce of life had been abruptly drained from his body, and he collapsed onto the floor in a heap.

The police arrived shortly after to conduct a routine investigation. They quickly ruled it a suicide via drug overdose, with no suspicion of foul play.

Once the room was cleared out, Ethan sat frozen on the edge of my empty bed, clutching the braille slate I had left behind with a white-knuckled grip.

A single line of text was punched into it.

Because he couldn’t read braille, he could only run his fingers over the raised dots again and again, tracing the blind text over and over.

That was when my primary physician rushed into the apartment.

Taking in the sight of Ethan’s hollow, shattered state, the doctor let out a heavy, solemn sigh.

“Did you really not know she had refused treatment?”

Ethan’s head snapped up violently, his eyes completely bloodshot. “Refused treatment? What do you mean, refused treatment?”

The doctor pulled a photocopied medical report from his briefcase and handed it over.

“The blood clot in Sienna’s brain was deteriorating at a catastrophic rate, pressing directly against her nerves. The physical pain from that kind of pressure is a hundred times worse than having your flesh carved out with a knife. I urged her to undergo immediate surgery, but she refused.”

The doctor looked down at Ethan, his gaze heavy with unhidden reproach.

“She told me… she didn’t want to be your burden anymore.”

The words hit Ethan like a physical blow, leaving him entirely paralyzed.

“A burden…” he whispered, repeating the word like a man who had lost his mind.

His thoughts raced back to yesterday afternoon, to the phone call where I had gasped that my head was hurting so badly.

What had he said to me?

He had snarled, “If your head hurts, take your medicine! What good does calling me do?”

He had told me, “I’m exhausted, Sienna! Stop calling me!”

With trembling hands, Ethan fished his phone out of his pocket and powered it on.

There, sitting quietly in his iMessage inbox, was the final voice message I had sent him.

He tapped it open.

“I’m sorry, Ethan. I won’t bother you ever again.”

The girl’s voice was impossibly soft, thick with a nasal congestion from crying, and carrying the fragile, hollow rattle of someone on the brink of death.

That single, quiet apology cut through Ethan’s heart like a serrated blade.

“Ah!”

He let out a violent shriek, slamming the phone brutally against his own head. The impact split his forehead open instantly, and dark blood began to stream down his face.

Dropping heavily to his knees, he began throwing himself forward, slamming his forehead against the wooden bed frame over and over again.

“What kind of brother am I… I’m a monster! An absolute piece of garbage!”

He wept so violently that he choked, coughing up a sudden splat of blood that stained the carpet crimson.

Nadia stood frozen in the doorway, watching his self-destructive breakdown with a flicker of pure disgust in her eyes.

“Oh, come on, Ethan, stop it. What’s done is done; people die all the time. She was the one who decided to end it, so why the hell are you torturing yourself?”

Ethan abruptly stopped slamming his head.

He slowly turned his neck, his blood-streaked face fixing Nadia with a dead, unblinking glare. It was the look of someone staring at a mortal enemy.

“What did you just say?”

A cold chill ran down Nadia’s spine under his gaze, but she forced herself to double down anyway. “Am I wrong? She was a useless cripple anyway. Living like that was just pure suffering for her.”

“Now that she’s gone, we don’t even have to ship her off to that county asylum anymore. Isn’t this actually a win for everyone?”

“A win?”

Swaying on his feet, Ethan hauled himself up and began advancing on Nadia, step by agonizing step.

“She became a cripple because she saved my goddamn life! She gave me her entire future, and you have the nerve to stand there and tell me her death is a win?”

Nadia stumbled back a step, panic creeping into her voice. “Why are you taking it out on me?! I wasn’t the one who forced her to swallow those pills!”

In a flash of pure rage, Ethan lunged forward and locked his hands tightly around Nadia’s throat.

“It was you! All of you pushed her over the edge! If you hadn’t spent every single day calling her a pathetic, blind cripple, if you hadn’t backed me into a corner to throw her away, she would still be alive!”

Nadia’s eyes began to roll back as the air was cut off, her fingers clawing frantically at Ethan’s suffocating grip on her neck.

“Let… Let go… The baby…”

Ethan’s grip suddenly loosened.

Nadia collapsed onto the floor in a heap, clutching her throat as she gasped frantically for air.

Ethan stared down at his own hands, a bizarre, broken laugh bubbling up from his chest—a sound far uglier than any weeping.

“Get out,” he whispered.

“Ethan, you’ve completely lost your mind!”

“I said, GET THE HELL OUT!” Ethan erupted into a hysterical, deafening screech. “Take your kid and get out of my house! Don’t you ever show your face to me again for the rest of your miserable life!”