Consumed Heart

I tapped my silver watch impatiently. “Great, just great. First, you’re late to pick me up, now my watch is broken.” I stared dead ahead at the snow-covered highway wrapped around the mountains. After a moment’s silence, I asked, “Well, what time is it?” 

“Eight-forty.” Brady, my brother, answered.

“Just like last year.” I put my forehead into my hand. “We can’t be late for Mom’s Gala every year.” We had been driving to a Gala my mom hosted every Christmastime. All her close, rich friends came and donated money for families who were less fortunate.

“It’ll be fine.” Brady looked out the window and over the cliff at the edge of the road. “See any wildlife?” He tried to change the subject.

“You know what, this isn’t the first time you screwed me over,” I said ignoring Brady. “Remember my first job? You got me fired on the first day. And when you asked Cindy to the dance when I told you I was going to ask her? Yeah. You’re just a pain.”

“Oh! So you’re just perfect-innocent-boy now, huh? You threw a party the night before my diploma exam. You spilled pop all over my laptop. You crashed my car. You gave me a black eye right before grad’ pictures. And the list goes on and on.” Brady grew more furious by the second.

“You know what? My life would be just so perfect without you. I wish you were dead.” I forged silence. It felt as if steam could escape both our ears. 

We didn’t dare look at each other. We stared out into the open. The snow fell at a much quicker rate. The roads were barely distinguishable under the snow and ice. Many moments passed before everything unhinged itself. 

The car began to swerve across the road. The car let go of every control. It wouldn’t brake nor steer. The ice held it’s deadly grasp as we headed straight to edge of the cliff as we approached the sharp turn only tens of meters ahead. “Jump out!” Brady yelled at me.

“What? No, not unless you do!” I barked back.

“Get out or you die!” 

I looked into Brady’s eyes as I frantically unbuckled my seatbelt and pushed myself out of the door. I landed on my side, an instant rush of pain spread from my chest to my head as I lay motionless, the impact on the solid road taking away my consciousness. 

My head throbbed as my eyes opened once more. I gingerly touched my left arm. The gentle touch of my finger against the deep gashes on my bicep sent a fiery pain all through my body. The blood that once ran thick through every inch of my body now stained the ice and snow.

As I stood, my eyes traced the tire marks of Brady’s car. I slowly walked across the tracks. My legs were fine, but my head, chest, and arm all throbbed with every pulse in my anxious heart. There was no way Brady could have ejected himself out of the car without rolling down the steep cliff along the road. 

“He’s okay.” I tried to convince myself. “He is just pulled over around this corner. He’s waiting for me.” If he was around the corner, he would have rushed to your aid already. “No. No. He is just mad I wished he was…” I did this.

I continued to follow the tire marks around a corner of the mountain. The tracks made an abrupt end. They ended facing the bottom of the cliff. 

“Just because the car is over, doesn’t mean he is dead.” He has to be, there are no signs he is alive. “He’s fine. He’s fine.”

I peered over the edge of the cliff. It was at least thirty feet down at nearly a ninety-degree angle. Luckily, I had driven this road hundreds of times and knew that there was a hill that had a gradual slope just ahead. With every step forward, my heart raced faster, and faster, like it was a runner experiencing runner’s high. It should have stopped, but a specter of motivation rippled through it to keep it moving.

I stepped over the metal barrier and tried to walk down the slope, but the snow got the better of me and I fell. A rush of fire spread through my body. I closed my eyes as I rolled down the hill, the image of Brady’s eyes were glued in my head. His face had evidently shown his panic, but his eyes were serene. 

As I rolled to a stop against the stump of a fallen tree, my eyes closed my mind became blank. 

When I woke once more, I leaned on trees for support as I walked to the wreckage site. As soon as I caught a glimpse of Brady’s car I let go of the pain and ran. Brady’s hand was poking out of the flipped car. His hand opened and closed like a heartbeat. 

“Brady!” I felt all my anxiety leave me. But just as soon as I felt this sensation of hope, I was thrown back by an inexplicable force. My back hit a tree that offered no comfort to my body. I fell into the snow. A wave of heat passed over me as my body shut down.

“Can you hear me?” A voice rang in my ears.

I struggled to open my eyes but when I did a short sensation of relief filled me before I saw the sight around him. A paramedic leaned over my head, but behind him, a blazing fire lit the forest.  

“Don’t move!” A second paramedic instructed as he strapped a brace around my head and neck.

“On three. One...two...three!” The paramedics lifted a board that my broken body lay on. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Rudy.” The pain in my chest felt like a thousand footballs hit me at once.

Without any recollection of how I got there, I was in an ambulance. I was discombobulated until Brady’s eyes made my body shudder with remorse. “My brother...” I said to the paramedic who was shining a miniature flashlight into my eyes. “My brother...Brady, he’s in the car. The car’s in the forest. The forest’s in the fire.” My voice sounded as if I were a sick old man who could only wheeze.

“Can you wiggle your toes?” The paramedic asked.

I wiggled my toes. “Where is my brother?” I began to grow impatient with the paramedic. “Answer me!”

“My name is Dean. We found you in the snow near a car that exploded. That is how the fire started. We put out the fire before it spread, but we haven’t found your brother’s body yet.” The paramedic put a non-rebreather oxygen mask over my mouth and nose which aided my chest.

After I was brought to a hospital, doctors did many x-rays and scans. In the end, I was diagnosed with six broken ribs, a grade 3 concussion, a mild spine contusion, hypothermia, and I received thirty stitches to repair my left arm and four stitches across my temple where my head met the road.

Tucked under the lamp on the hospital bedside table was a rosary. I never prayed a rosary. I had been raised a Catholic but never prayed outside of a church.  I stared at the holy object, possessed by my own guilt. 

“Mr. Chisnall, please try to rest.” One of the rotating nurses recorded information off the monitors. 

“Have they brought my brother in yet?” I asked pretending the uncertainty in my voice hadn’t been there. 

“No, but many trained men and women are putting everything aside to find him.” the nurse smiled and patted my foot as she exited the room.

“C’mon Brady.” I squeezed the rosary in my hand. My body was too weak to fight the tears I would have normally held back.

In the morning I woke to my mom holding my right hand with my dad right over her shoulder.  “Rudy.” She sniveled. “Hi, baby. We’re right here.” She buried her face in my shoulder.

“Where is Brady?” My voice shook.

My mom put her face into her hands and wept. “He, uh...They found his body in the car wreckage.” My dad turned around, his shoulders bounced as he cried.

My body fell limp.  My breathing quivered. “Dead.” I turned my head away from my parents. How could I look at the people who had spent countless hours hugging, kissing, caring for, playing with, teaching, embarrassing, and loving Brady? I killed him. I was selfish. I only thought about me when I wished he would die. I never thought my wish would take a hold of me and forcefully make me watch my worst nightmare.

 I was released from the hospital four nights later. I pretended I was fine. I stayed at my dorm on campus despite my parents' constant begging for me to stay with them. I buried myself in textbooks. I read every page of every book but none of it entered my mind as it was overflowing with grief and guilt. The funeral took place in the snow, Brady always loved the snow. I didn’t go to the funeral, I couldn’t pull myself out of the pit which I lay at the bottom of.  I finally left my dorm a week after the funeral and placed a picture of a dog I drew on his grave. On the back of the picture, I wrote what he means to me. I never wrote sorry, but the words of how amazing he was were my own way of penance.

The gala was rescheduled in Brady’s honour for exactly one month after his death. I unwillingly attended. I sat at the table furthest away from the dancefloor and busier tables. I spun the bottom rim of a whiskey glass around the table. Many people gingerly touched me as if I was a broken mirror. They all made comments like, “I’m so sorry”

 You did nothing, I am sorry. 

“You’re lucky to be alive.” 

No, I am not. 

“I am so glad you made a speedy recovery.”

 I never recovered.

“Are you going to keep dancing with that whiskey, or are you going to dance with me?” Rachel gently whispered in my ear. Rachel’s dad and my dad had worked together for my whole lifetime. Every gala, I hung out with Rachel. I danced with her some years, we snuck in a beer in our later teen years, when we were younger we played hide and go seek. 

I stood and took her hand. Seeing her in her violet dress made me smile. “If you ever wear a dress that’s not purple, I would fear the apocalypse has started.” I smiled only for a minute when a picture of Brady’s youthful face welled tears in my eyes. 

“I’m sorry about everything.” She spoke sincerely.

“You’re not the first to say that to me.” I tried to smile as we slowly danced in an empty corner of the dancefloor.

“I mean it. Brady was amazing. You and him stuck together so close not even a sword could split you up.”

“No, but my selfishness could.” I let out a shaky breath. “I killed him. We were fighting about...about things siblings should fight over. I just didn’t think about anyone but me, and...I wished he would die. Less than a day later he was dead, just what I asked for. I couldn’t live with this guilt. I did everything I could to make things better, I prayed a rosary. Have you ever heard of me praying?  I had to use a nurse’s phone to look up how to pray it. That only made me think I had done something to fix this situation. There is nothing I can do to fix this. I made a horrible mistake. I mean...I loved him. I just didn’t think anyone would hear my stupid wish. And now every time I see his face or the news stories, I...I can’t bear it. I did something terrible. I killed him for my own benefit.” I buried my face into her shoulders and wept.