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Gabe’s sitting on the couch in the middle of the night when it starts.
In the darkness of the family room, his old laptop burns his thighs through his joggers, and the brightness of the screen burns his retinas. His fingers shake as they jab the slightly dusty keys, as he drafts a particularly unprofessional sounding email to his math teacher, trying to explain why exactly he’d gotten up and left in the middle of class earlier today, and trying not to let his frustration show through the black pixels.
They should know, really.
It’s on his file.
But they don’t appear to like paying attention to that.
I really think it’s disgusting how you
He stares at it.
Slams his index finger on the backspace button.
You’ve taught me for four years now so I think you should know
Nope.
I hate your class anyway
Absolutely not.
Before he can type out yet another insulting or passive aggressive comment, Gabe jumps when the front door opens. Loudly. And clumsily.
But not as clumsily as the girl stumbling in through it.
With a start, Gabe realises that it’s Natalie.
She’s staggering over the threshold, tripping over air, giggling, eyes wide, head leaned back as she’s practically shouting garbled English and she’s being loud, way too loud for - Gabe takes a split second to glance at the bottom right corner of his screen - 02:33.
Upon rapid reflection, he realises that the time isn’t really the issue here; Natalie is pretty much renowned for staying up way into the early hours of the morning. The issue arising is that her insomnia is typically due to physics problem sets or literature essays or piano pieces or history quizzes, not because of…whatever she’s been doing to get herself in this state.
Stomach coiling with heat (which, for once, has nothing to do with the fact that his insides hate his soul), Gabe stands up, snapping his laptop shut and tossing it aside on the couch, warmth radiating from his clothes. The dizziness hits him as it always does, but he manages to push through it, ignoring how the house is spinning, as he walks through the warped room to reach his little sister.
She’s laughing.
There’s no humour in it.
Between each giggle she takes a breath in, and it’s sharp and squeaky and loud and wheezy and it pains Gabe to listen to.
That’s not Natalie.
Jesus, what the fuck has she done?
Why the fuck has she done it?
The cold, winter wind slices Gabe the second he makes it to the doorway. He nearly realises when he notices the figure standing behind Natalie, gripping loosely onto her waist.
Henry.
Gabe shoots him a less-than-friendly look, but doesn’t have time to hold it for long before Natalie’s toppling over, her hands slapping against his upper arms, her head thudding against the upper half of his chest. It elevates a pain he hadn’t known was there. Instinctively, he outstretches his arms, catching her, cupping her elbows with his shaking hands.
“Henry, look, it’s my brother. It’s Gabe. It’s Gabriel.” When she’s up close, he can hear the trembling alongside the slight rasp in her voice. It’s sickening to listen to. “You know Gabe, don’t you, Henry? You haven’t seen him much lately, though, have you? Because he’s been, like, really sick.”
Gabe swallows thickly. “Nat-”
She continues to ramble, seemingly unaware of his unraveling panic. “Always has been, actually. Did I tell you about the time he nearly died once? More than once, act-”
“Natalie,” Gabe says, a little louder, cutting her off.
If her general demeanour wasn’t evidence enough to suggest she’s not quite right, that just about tops it off.
Gabe distinctly remembers their conversation from years ago.
The one where he had told her about what his parents tried so desperately to hide.
The one where she had promised to never tell anyone.
What happened to that little girl?
Natalie rolls her head back and Gabe catches her gaze. Her bloodshot scleras, her dilated pupils.
He knows that look.
It does not belong on the girl he knows.
Not on Natalie.
Sweet Natalie who always deals with his shit.
He snaps his head back up and stares daggers at Henry.
“What did you do?” he hisses.
Henry’s eyes widen and his mouth drops open slightly, evidently offended at the mere implication. “I didn’t do anything!” he protests, gesturing wildly to himself. “She- she took all the pills herself.”
“Pills?” Gabe snaps, and he swears he feels his stomach actually drop. “What- what pills?”
He has to be lying.
He has to be high.
Natalie doesn’t do…that.
She knows what it can do.
Gabe knows what it can do.
There’s silence for a moment. Gabe’s ears are ringing, drowning out Natalie’s incessant mumbling and rambling. He does nothing but stare at Henry. Henry, who’s looking just as terrified as Gabe feels.
He feels Natalie buckle slightly under him, and he bends down to keep her in his arms.
“I can’t feel my legs,” she whispers, her voice light and airy. Her head is still lolled back.
Gabe feels his eyebrows furrow, a stab of sorrow sinking into his sternum.
“I know,” he whispers back, trying to keep calm, trying not to let slip how fucking anxious he really is. “I know, Nat. It’s okay.”
He jerks his head back up to the boy standing in the doorway.
“Henry. I’m not joking,” he whisper-shouts, heart racing at the possibility that Mom or Dan could come down at any moment. “What did she take?”
Silence.
In which Natalie drops further and Gabe attempts to hoist her up with his aching arms.
Fuck his body for struggling to take care of the one person he’d sworn to protect.
He supposes that, by the looks of it, he’s not very good at keeping promises, either.
When more seconds stretch by, with the only noise being Natalie’s breath, Gabe shakes his head in disbelief.
He’d known Henry was a bad influence.
“Goodbye, Henry,” he snaps, before shutting the front door in his face.
Quickly, he spins Natalie around, letting go of her softly and letting her drop to the couch. Her head finds the armrest immediately, her shaking body curling up, much like a child would do. She’s still talking to herself, still laughing softly, still being too loud for this time of night, but relatively quiet for someone who is most definitely high.
Gabe feels a piece of his soul chisel away.
He loves his sister, but he hates the sight of her like this.
The questions are already flooding into his brain.
Is this the first time?
If not, then how long has she been doing this for?
Why hadn’t he noticed before?
What the fuck did she take?
Or, more importantly, what the fuck did Henry give her?
How much did she take?
Why would she do something like this?
Why would she want to ruin herself with devilish, miniscule capsules, that can fuck you up if you take just a milligram too much?
Gabe knows she’s stressed beyond belief, but…fuck.
Not this bad.
What a piece of shit he is, for not even noticing.
What a bad brother.
He knows full well what it’s like, to be overwhelmed so badly that you believe shovelling mixtures with deadly amounts of Vydura and morphine and fuck knows what else down your throat is the only way, is the best way to numb the agonising pain.
Something else he knows is how easy it is to rely on the wretched things.
And how difficult it is to wean yourself off of them.
There’s one main problem (besides the fact that his sister is fucking high) that’s jutting out at Gabe.
He’s in pain in body, whereas she…isn’t.
So the only explanation that Gabe can come up with is that she’s, well, stressed.
Which, in his eyes, doesn’t make complete sense.
Everyone gets stressed.
But not enough to gulp down whatever she has.
Whatever the reason, the mere thought of Natalie engaging in that behaviour terrifies him.
“Natalie,” he murmurs.
He crouches down slowly to meet her gaze, head spinning slightly as he does so. In the hazy light of the room, he can just about make out her expression. Wide eyes. Frantic. Darting everywhere. Abdomen twitching as she laughs at nothing in particular.
“Do you remember what you took?” he asks.
It’s futile.
She just bursts into giggles again.
“I’m tripping,” she rasps, syllables jumping, clashing into each other.
Gabe sighs softly. “I know,” he whispers, his tone gentle. “I know. I’m just- just trying to work out what you took.”
She laughs again, louder.
“Nat,” he rushes in a panicked whisper, “I know you’re…not okay, but Mom and Da-”
“Mom,” Natalie groans. She lifts her head up, eyebrows furrowed, eyes slits. “It’s always all about Mom, isn’t it? And-” she weakly lifts her hand, pointing an accusatory finger towards him to jab him in the chest. “-you.”
Gabe swallows thickly.
The admission renders him speechless.
“It’s like they don’t even know I exist,” Natalie continues, clearly unaware of her brother’s inner turmoil. “Like, Dad’s worried about Mom, until something goes wrong with you - which, is, like, fucking always - and then they both focus on you and there’s nothing left for me.”
Gabe hates the fact that she’s not exaggerating.
He hates that her life has been filled with speeding drives to the emergency room in the middle of the night, hates that their parents barely ever go to her recitals because they’re too busy making sure he’s not coughing up blood, hates that she has to sit longer at the table at mealtimes because he takes longer to eat when she could be doing literally anything more productive with her time, hates that she knows more about his medical history than her own.
He hates that her entire life has been dictated by his one.
“You know I don’t like it,” is all he can muster.
The guilt paralyses his vocal chords.
On the rare nights like tonight where he’s in minimal pain, when his thoughts are not abruptly interrupted by his sister being high out of the blue, they all end the same.
With him staring into space, thinking about how he could’ve been a better brother through their childhood years.
“No, I don’t,” Natalie sighs, voice trembling, and it takes Gabe aback. There’s anger blazing in her eyes. “You barely even talk to me anymore, which is so unfair, because we used to talk all the time. You used to care.”
Gabe feels his lips part, feels his heart stop beating, feels his stomach twist itself up in a way that, for once, has nothing to do with the very thing that Natalie is annoyed at.
“I do care!” he protests, but it’s useless.
“No, I don’t think you do!”
The thought makes him feel sick, sicker than he already is.
Whether she believes it or not, he has tried to be the best he can be.
He tries to insert opportunities into conversations where she can talk about her perfect GPA or her piano playing or Henry or literally anything about herself.
He tries not to complain when the minor pains start, even though he knows how they’ll eventually progress.
He tries to downplay his achievements to uplift hers.
And she thinks he doesn’t care.
In fact, he cares more now than he already has.
He’s been worse. Crippling pain that paralyses him in the halls at school, migraines that take him out of reality, dizzy spells that bruise his body when he tumbles.
She’s there for him to put his arm around her shoulders to help him stagger to the nurse’s office.
She’s there to close the curtains and put a blindfold over his eyes and try all the weird remedies that eventually ebb the stabbing pains.
She’s there to lift his legs up onto her shoulders to get the blood flowing back to his head.
And he cares.
He cares about how he’s disrupting her life.
But, apparently, that isn’t enough.
Gabe feels his eyes begin to water.
“I…” he begins, before breaking off to sniff, to blink the moisture away. He already knows that what is about to come out of his mouth is a terrible excuse, and that it doesn’t make up, doesn’t explain, doesn’t compensate for everything that Natalie’s been holding in. “Listen, Nat, I’ve been struggling at the-”
“I know!” she bawls, with such force that Gabe recoils an inch. His lips part slightly, vision blurring once more. “You’re always fucking struggling!”
Fuck, she’s hurt.
And it’s his fault.
Gabe shuffles backwards until his back hits the low table with a soft thud. His stomach burns with guilt and anger and embarrassment.
The silence that stretches after that is thick and agonising, in which the two of them do nothing but stare at each other, eyes brimming with liquid emotion and faces flushed with fury.
After a moment, Gabe decides to open his mouth. To deflect.
“I don’t want you doing drugs,” he says sharply, voice trembling, and he swears he has never meant something more in his entire life.
Natalie just snorts. “Well, that’s persuasive, coming from Pfizer’s Man of the Year.”
The words are accusatory, biting, cold.
“I…” Gabe begins to protest, to defend himself, to explain that it's different, that he’s different, but realises it’s ultimately futile. It’s nothing she doesn’t already know. “Okay.”
“It’s just, like, so unfair, you know?” Her voice has begun to waver. “Because I work so hard and I have things that I’m p-proud of, but they never even notice because there’s always something wrong with y-you and I love you but I also hate you and want to be as far away from you as I can and I don’t get how that’s, like, even possible…”
When she speaks the last part, her voice trails off into hitched, ragged breathing again, tears lining her syllables. She lowers her head again, letting it hang as her back twitches.
Gabe takes this as an opportunity to (slowly) stand up from his spot on the floor. His knees crack and his legs shake as he does so, his head slightly fuzzy at the increased height level. He turns around and flops onto the couch, right next to Natalie.
He sits there for a few moments, and lets his sister cry her sorrows out.
“You don’t hate me,” he murmurs eventually, and he’s not sure who he’s trying to convince.
“I do,” she sobs, syllables slurring and sludging together. “I do, Gabe, I…I do. I really do.”
Yet, as she proclaims her hatred, her limbs become weaker, and her body slides from the direction of the couch armrest to her brother. The left side of her body hits his shoulder, but she must have decided that this won’t suffice, as her head drops into his lap.
Gabe has to admit, it does take him aback.
But he holds her shaking body as she cries, her tears soaking into his clothes. He doesn’t care about her volume anymore; maybe it would be better if Mom or Dan came down, because he is clearly not equipped for this situation.
They don’t say anything else to each other.
It allows Gabe to think.
A dangerous game.
He realises something, as she begins to quiver more, as he rests a hand on her thick hair, the pads of his fingers sinking in slightly deeper.
He’s in pain in body, whereas she’s in pain in mind.
Yet they crave the same release.
And, as he sits here, carding a trembling hand through his little sister’s sweaty hair, he realises something else with a gut-twisting start.
Mom’s in pain in mind, too.