I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 03

I Saved My Brother, But He Killed Me Softly Chapter 03

The next day, Ethan went out. He didn’t say where he was going, but I knew he was heading to the county asylum on the south side of town.

When he came back that afternoon, he rushed through the front door, bringing a gust of wind with him.

“Sienna, Nadia’s wedding dress just got delivered,” he said, his voice carrying a wave of poorly concealed excitement because of the unborn child. “I left it on the couch. Make sure you don’t touch it, okay?”

“Okay,” I replied softly, playing the part of the obedient sister.

That evening, Nadia came over. They were trying on the wedding dress in the living room.

“Ethan, how does it look?” Nadia asked, her voice dripping with sweetness.

“Beautiful. My wife looks perfect in anything,” he replied.

Sitting in my dark bedroom, listening to the laughter and joy drifting from outside, the blood clot in my brain started to throb again.

The pain felt like someone was burying a power drill into my skull.

I fumbled to pull open my nightstand drawer, searching for my painkillers.

Nothing. The bottle must have dropped onto the floor. I turned my wheelchair around, intending to go out to the living room to ask Ethan for the medication.

The moment I rolled past my bedroom door, the wheels ran over something soft.

Rip!

The sound of tearing fabric cut through the quiet living room, horribly loud.

“My dress!” Nadia shrieked.

Panicking, I tried to back up, completely forgetting that the latch on my prosthetic leg was slightly loose. I pitched forward and tumbled right out of the wheelchair.

My prosthetic slammed hard against the sharp corner of the coffee table.

Thud!

Agony shot straight up from the root of my thigh. Curling into a ball on the floor, cold sweat instantly drenched my back.

“Sienna!”

Ethan rushed over, but he didn’t reach down to pull me up. He stepped right over me, snatching the wedding dress off the floor.

“How did it get such a massive rip? This is a custom piece!”

Nadia pushed him away, sobbing. “Sienna! Did you do this on purpose? You just don’t want us to get married! You’re jealous of me!”

Lying flat on the floor, I fumbled around, trying to haul myself back up. “I didn’t… I was just trying to find my painkillers…”

“Stop playing the victim!” Nadia hissed, pointing a finger at my face. “What business does a blind girl have wandering around anyway? You bring nothing but bad luck!”

Gritting my teeth against the blinding pain in my leg, I gasped, “Ethan, help me up. My leg is stuck.”

Ethan just stood there, staring down at me. I couldn’t see his expression, but I could hear the heavy, ragged pattern of his breathing.

“Sienna, you’re blind! Can’t you just stay put in your wheelchair?!” he exploded.

In five years, it was the first time he had ever screamed at me like this.

“Do you have any idea how much this dress costs? Do you have any goddamn clue how exhausted I am trying to put this wedding together?!” He hurled the dress onto the couch, suddenly clutching his head as if breaking down completely.

“What did I do to deserve this? I spend every day busting my ass out there, acting like a slave just to make a buck, and then I come home and have to cater to you! If I’d known it would turn out like this, I should have never saved you when you slit your wrists!”

The air fell dead silent; even Nadia stopped crying. Lying on the freezing floor, my mind went entirely blank.

I should have never saved you.

The words felt like a dull knife, sawing back and forth across my heart. He regretted it. He actually regretted saving my life.

Working in the dark, I slowly wrenched my prosthetic out from under the coffee table. The joint mechanism had shattered, and the jagged metal edges sliced deep into my thigh, the blood starting to flow.

I didn’t cry out. Using my hands to anchor myself against the floor, I dragged my weight inch by inch back into the wheelchair. The entire time, Ethan didn’t lift a finger; he just stood there, watching me crawl up.

“I’m sorry, Ethan,” I said once I was back in the seat, my voice so flat and hollow it terrified me. “It won’t happen again.”

I turned my wheelchair and rolled back into my room.

The moment the door clicked shut, I heard the sharp crack of Ethan slapping his own face outside.

“Nadia, I’m so sorry. I lost control of my emotions…” He was apologizing to Nadia.

I reached up to touch my face, looking for tears, but my skin was completely dry. I couldn’t even cry anymore.

The pain from the blood clot reached a deafening crescendo, sending blinding flashes of white light across my vision.

I pulled out my phone and dialed my doctor’s number from memory.

“Doctor, if I stop the treatments, how long do I have left?”

“Sienna? Don’t do anything reckless! The pressure from the clot is catastrophic right now; you could experience a cerebral hemorrhage at any second! You need surgery immediately!”

“I asked how long,” I repeated quietly.

The doctor fell silent for a beat. “A few days at the earliest. Two weeks at most. Sienna, listen to me—”

I cut the line.

A few days. That was more than enough.