It was my second chance to make amends with my brother, but this time I was forced to carry his lifeless body up 10 floors. Luckily for him, he wasn’t dead yet. Upstairs in my apartment, I had a complete first-aid kit, the kind you learn to make when you’re an Emergency Medical Technician, i.e., the guys who come get you before the police, fire department, etc.
Ever since he went his separate way almost a dozen years ago, my brother has constantly been in trouble. Trouble with the law, trouble with women, trouble with drugs, and sometimes all three. He emancipated himself from our parents just before they died, and the problems he had with them became his problems with me.
A couple of years ago, I made him an ultimatum to clean up his act or never see me again. He chose to keep his act dirty. I never intended to stop seeing him, and he knew that. He knew that my threats were mostly empty. He knew that I put up with his bullshit because that’s what mom and dad would have done. They were always rough on him, but never had the heart to truly leave him.
About a year ago, I tracked him down to his newest ramshackle living situation. I paid him a visit without warning and found him drunk and battered in his home, if the place he lived could even be called that.
I only succeeded in making things worse.
That brings me to today, carrying my brother’s limp almost-corpse up to my apartment. I knew that he had taken a powerful dose of heroin, and I had the right medication to revive him. I had to stitch him up in some of the strangest places on his body. The so-called friend he was with when I found him told me what he was on and how he became so badly damaged. The details of his injuries are irrelevant, but they were severe enough to become big problems if left untreated. He looked like he had been in a car accident.
My brother was a mess. Always had been. Once I got him cleaned up and resting, I mixed myself a martini and racked my brain about what to do next.