Chapter Thirty-Four

Parker Lowell

I walked off of the bus with a sigh of something between relief and dread. Relief that the day was finally over. Dread that I'd have to go back again the next day. I walked up to the mailbox and pulled out the mail and began to go through it. But nothing on the envelopes registered into my mind as one white envelope after another passed in and out of my vision.

I found myself beginning to think about my friends. I hadn't realized what I was getting myself into by signing that card. Their immediate reactions were more ones of shock more than anything else. But once they got their tongues back, I was to be subjected to jibes and name-calling all day by Caleb, Rob, and Eddie. In fact, I think I was pretty much sentenced to it for the rest of the week. No, I was not looking forward to going back. Not looking forward to going back at all.

I sighed as I walked into the house and haphazardly dropped my coat and backpack in a random place somewhere in the house. I walked into the living room, ready to plop myself down on the couch for a little while before Taylor and Lyle got back (I assumed they weren't back yet because I didn't see Lyle's car in the driveway). When I got in there, I immediately noticed Lyle's coat and backpack, which was opened, lying on the couch as if he had just dumped them there without thinking. Maybe they were home. Or at least, they had been.

I didn't have time to think about it too long because, without warning and without a reason I was really aware of then, I suddenly had to use the bathroom. Dismissing Lyle's things, I made my way across the living room to the door to the bathroom, which, I noticed suddenly, was slightly ajar. It wasn't anything unusual, but today it struck me that way.

I walked in, beginning to get this strange feeling that something was wrong. And when I saw the scene that lay waiting for me in the bathroom, I suddenly knew why.

"Oh my God!" I shouted right before bending over to throw up.

There was blood everywhere. Blood on the bathtub, the toilet, the rug, and the door. Too much blood to be out of someone for that someone to be alive. The only problem was, that someone was nowhere in sight.

It took me what seemed like quite a while to calm myself down enough to notice the trail of it, heading out of the bathroom. I took a deep breath and started to follow it, not really sure I wanted to see what it led to.

I followed that trail all the way into the kitchen, only stopping to notice a small puddle of it in the doorway of the kitchen and guessed that the bleeding person must have stopped there a moment or something before carefully stepping over it and into the kitchen where my eyes immediately lit on Taylor.

There were red streaks of blood in his blonde hair, dark spots on his shirt and a red river flowing from what I realized was a gaping wound in his arm and onto the floor around where he lay. His eyes were closed and from where I was standing, frozen to the spot, it didn't look like he was breathing.

That was when I began to panic. I mean really start to panic. The image, that I knew had engraved itself in my memory for all time, was so much like an....omen. Like me standing outside of my body and watching myself slip away into the chasms of death.

Exaggerations aside, there was a certain distinct feeling inside of me that I can't really describe. It was like a part of me was slipping away as I stood there, helpless and too confused to know what to do, watching taylor. I suddenly knew the true meaning of something someone once told me when I made an inquiry of them pertaining to if they thought my brother was dead. They said: "When you lose your twin to death, a part of you also dies." I was too young to understand them then. I was too young to want to understand now. That was when my legs started working again.

I ran over to taylor and put his head gently into my lap while holding up the injured arm and trying my hardest to put pressure on it, even though I had no idea if that was even what I was supposed to do. Feeling the bone so close to my thumb nearly made me throw up again. I felt around with my other thumb for a pulse. I found one on his neck. A faint one.

I took a deep breath and turned my eyes toward the ceiling of the room. I was a very squeamish person, especially for a guy. There was blood everywhere, The floor, the phone stand, the phone...

The phone!

I realized that the phone wasn't on its hook and also that it wasn't making that annoying sound phones make when they're off the hook and there's no one on the other end.

I picked it up tentatively and put it to my ear.

"He-Hello?" I said meekly, my voice cracking, stressed by panic.

"Hello! Hello? Who is this?" said the other voice urgently.

Oh great. She sounded like she had just woken up.

"Who's this?" I returned.

"What's going on?" she asked.

"Um," I stuttered. Why couldn't I get the words out? "Um, my, um brother," I said, stumbling over the word a little bit. I still didn't feel comfortable calling Taylor my brother, especially not when I remembered the three guys back in Oklahoma who really were his brothers. I figured this person didn't know any better. "My brother is hurt."

"Hurt? Hurt how?" she asked.

"It looks like someone cut him. On the arm. With a knife or something. I don't know what to do!"

"Call an ambulance!" she said. She sounded no more calm than I did, if a bit more rational.

"Okay," I agreed. I took a deep breath and hung up on her without any word of warning and quickly tried to dial the phone. It took me three tries to get the number for 911 right. My fingers kept slipping.

"911," the lady at the other end said. Or, at least, that was part of what she said. I wasn't listening to the rest because I was so relieved that I had gotten the number right.

I proceeded to tell her what I had found and answered all of her questions (and she had quite a few of them). I was about ready to tell her to stop talking to me and call a damn ambulance already. That my brother was dying.

My eyes wildly darted around the room and even the sounds of the ambulance siren seemed far away as it pulled up to our house. The paramedics shouted back and forth to each other, lifting Taylor gently into the back of the vehicle and letting me hop in behind them.

The only thing I could think of as we raced to the hospital that sunny Monday afternoon was how familiar that woman's voice had sounded.

Is this font any better? Let me know.
Index
Chapter Thirty Three
Chapter Thirty-Five