Born to Suffer So My Brother Learns Chapter 05
From that day on, Mom went completely insane.
She stayed by my body every second, refusing to leave. If anyone came near me, she’d fight them off, as if her life depended on it.
When a nurse brought a white sheet to cover me, Mom grabbed a pillow and hurled it at her.
“Don’t you dare cover her! She’s still alive! Are you trying to smother her?” she shrieked, her voice so shrill it was terrifying.
The nurse stumbled back two steps from the impact, then looked helplessly at the doctor.
The doctor sighed and waved his hand. Then, he led the nurse out of the hospital room.
The moment the door closed, Mom turned around. The ferocity on her face vanished instantly, replaced by a gentleness I had never seen before.
She brought over a basin of warm water and a clean towel. Sitting down by the bed, she gently took my hand and said, “Helena, be good now. Let me clean you up. Once you’re all clean, you’ll wake up.”
With her head bowed, she meticulously wiped my fingers one by one, not even missing the gaps under my nails. Her touch was impossibly light, as if she feared I might shatter if she pressed too hard.
After finishing my hands, she moved on to wipe my face.
As she wiped, she kept murmuring, “When you were little, you loved being clean. The first thing you’d do when you came home from school was wash your hands. I used to always scold you for taking too long and wasting water.”
Her voice was very soft, as if she were coaxing a sleeping child.
After wiping my body, she put down the towel and took out a white princess dress.
My eyes stung all at once.
I had spotted that dress at the mall and fallen in love with it at first sight, but I didn’t have the money to buy it. Thus, I followed Mom around every day, nagging her about it. It took a full two weeks of begging before she grudgingly agreed to buy it for me.
The day we bought the dress, I was so happy that I couldn’t sleep all night. I folded it neatly and placed it at the very bottom of the wardrobe.
I couldn’t bring myself to wear it–not even once.
Mom held the dress in her hands, her tears falling onto the white hem.
“Helena, you loved this dress most of all. Let me put it on you. Once you wear it, you’ll be the most beautiful little angel.”
With infinite care, she slipped the dress onto my body, pulling up the zipper and smoothing out every wrinkle.
Then, she sat by the bedside, brushing the stray hairs from my forehead over and over again.
Irwin stood in the doorway, his eyes alarmingly red-rimmed.
“Mom, Helena is already gone. Please let her go in peace. Don’t torment her anymore,” he said hoarsely.
Mom whipped her head around, her glare so vicious that it looked like she wanted to devour him alive.
“It’s all your fault! If you hadn’t been guzzling soda every single day, would Helena have died? And you still have the nerve to even mention her name!”
Irwin’s face went pale. His lips trembled, but not a single word came out.
Dad stood at the door, watching Mom deceive herself. Yet, there wasn’t a trace of pity in his eyes.
“You’re not grieving. You just can’t face the fact that you killed her,” he said icily.
Mom shuddered violently, gripping my hand so tightly that her nails dug deep into the back of it. But I could no longer feel the pain.
Like a madwoman, Mom drove everyone out and locked the door from the inside.
She didn’t eat, drink, or sleep. She just kept vigil over me without resting. She’d laugh one minute, cry the next, and talk endlessly about things from my childhood.
“Helena, when you were little, you clung to me the most. You’d come running home from school and throw yourself into my arms, following me everywhere I went.
“Once, I had to work late, and you sat on the front steps waiting for me for three whole hours. Your legs were bitten all over by mosquitoes. It broke my heart, but you just smiled and said it was nothing.
“I won’t scold or punish you ever again. Please just wake up.”
In all the time I was alive, I had never heard her speak to me so tenderly.
When I got first place on an exam and ran home excitedly to tell her, without even lifting her head, she simply said, “Don’t get too cocky now.”
When I was running a fever, she left me at home alone and went to work, without even pouring me a glass of
water.
But now, here she was, pouring out the gentlest words she’d ever spoken in her entire life to my ice-cold corpse.
Late at night, Mom couldn’t hold on anymore. She slumped over the edge of the bed, her consciousness sinking bit by bit.
Even in sleep, she still clutched the hem of my dress tightly, refusing to let go no matter what.
Drifting beneath the ceiling, I looked down at all of this and felt nothing but bitter irony.
She wailed over a corpse, yet she’d never once looked at me when I was still breathing.
Was there anything in this world more absurd than this?
