Born to Suffer So My Brother Learns Chapter 04
“Helena, I’ve already withdr-”
But before she could even finish her sentence, Mom’s smile froze.
I lay motionless on the operating table. My face was sheet-white, my lips tinged blue, and my chest was completely still.
“Helena?” Mom’s voice suddenly wavered. “Helena, I’m talking to you, you hear?”
No one answered her.
Irwin followed behind, his legs giving out from under him. He hit the floor hard on his knees, tears pouring down his face in endless streams.
“Helena, you…” Mom stumbled toward the bed, her hand shaking as she stretched it out and pressed her trembling fingers under my nose.
There was no breath at all.
As if burned, she yanked her hand back. She froze for two seconds, then grabbed my shoulders and shook me like a woman possessed.
“Helena, stop pretending to be asleep! Wake up! I really did bring the money back-just open your eyes and look at me!”
My head swayed left and right with her shaking, like a marionette whose strings had been cut.
“Helena, do you hear me? I won’t blame the hospital for ripping us off anymore-we’ll get you treated right now. I’ll buy you anything you want! Just wake up!”
I remained motionless.
“Impossible. This is impossible!” Mom suddenly shrieked, “I clearly diluted the pesticide with so much water! It couldn’t possibly kill anyone! You’re so healthy-how could you die?”
She whipped her head around and glared viciously at the nurse who had just walked in.
“It was you! You people didn’t do everything you could to save her! You quacks!”
The nurse, her eyes red-rimmed, slammed the death certificate down in front of her.
“Ma’am, it’s time to face reality. No matter how much you dilute pesticide, it’s still highly toxic. It was you who kept stalling and refusing to pay that delayed the critical window for treatment. If she had been brought in just five minutes earlier, your daughter would not have died!”
“Bullshit!” Mom lunged at the nurse wildly. “It’s you people who are incompetent! You’re the ones who killed my daughter!”
Dad charged forward in one stride and shoved Mom hard to the ground.
Mom crashed onto the floor and sat there dazed, unable to come to her senses for a long time.
Dad’s eyes were bloodshot with fury.
“Rosanna, that’s enough!”
“Why you!”
“You were the one who killed Helena,” Dad said, each word deliberate. “And even now, you still refuse to admit
you were wrong.”
Just then, two traffic officers walked in with the blood test report in their hands.
One of them said gravely, “Mr. Blanchard, your blood alcohol content came back as zero. You weren’t driving under the influence. Mrs. Blanchard, care to explain why you kept throwing out baseless accusations and getting in the way of efforts to save your daughter’s life?”
Mom slumped on the floor, her lips trembling violently, unable to utter a single word.
But Dad grabbed Mom’s face, forcing her to look at him. “Helena was drenched in cold sweat from the pain and vomiting blood nonstop, yet you turned a blind eye to it.
“When she begged you to tell the truth in the car, you refused to listen. All you cared about was teaching Irwin a lesson and getting back at me for forgetting the anniversary!”
His voice grew louder and louder, and tears finally fell.
“It was you, Rosanna. You pushed Helena to her death, bit by bit. And now you’re crying? Now you regret it? Well, it’s too late!”
Mom was shaking all over. Suddenly, she raised her hand and slapped herself hard across the face.
Each slap landed heavier than the last. Blood soon seeped from the corner of her mouth, and even her teeth loosened. Yet, she kept slapping her own face frantically, as if she couldn’t feel any pain at all.
“It was me. I killed Helena. It was me. It was me. It was me.”
She crawled over and threw her arms around my cold body, pressing her face tightly against my ice-cold cheek.
“Helena, I was wrong,” she wailed with gut-wrenching grief. “I was really wrong. Please come back. I’ll never cause trouble again. I’m begging you-open your eyes and look at me.”
Her tears streamed down onto my utterly cold face and trickled along my cheek.
I floated in mid-air, watching all of this.
Once, what I had craved most was her embrace.
When I was little and fell down, I’d cry and reach my hands out to her. But she never picked me up. Instead, she’d just look at me icily and say, “Pick yourself back up.”
Now she was finally holding me so tightly and fiercely, as if she wanted to crush me into her very bones.
Her tears were hot, but no amount of warmth could heat up my cold body,
I felt nothing at all.
Now that I was dead, what use was the love she’d refused to give me when I was alive?
