During the third week, the week before Christmas, Kaylee was finally allowed to come home, the best news we'd heard since the accident. But then she had a major meltdown when she couldn't remember who we were, or where she was. She looked right into my eyes, my parents' eyes, my siblings' eyes, and cried "stranger danger!", like she'd done when she was five and an older man handed her a lollipop outside of Mandy's Sweets and Treats. For hours, she wouldn't let anyone come into the closet where she was hiding, and if we tried, she'd scream bloody murder.
I had never been more terrified in my life. Not because it wasn't right for a thirteen-year-old to be reacting like this to her family—which it obviously wasn't—but because, with those last few outcries, I knew her end was drawing near.
Her doctor had said she would forget us, completely, just before her brain injury caused her body to shut down on itself. And she had clearly forgotten us the moment she stepped foot into our home, her home. She had clearly unraveled the thread that had woven us together. She had clearly been unraveling right inside that coat closet, with all our winter jackets and sweaters, including hers, hanging above her.
After many failed attempts to coerce her out of the closet, my father called the hospital and a nurse came over. But by the time the nurse managed to calm her down, so she could look at us, there was nothing familiar about her eyes except the color: green, with little brown speckles. The love, the joy, the life that we all remembered and treasured so much about her was gone—replaced by a frail shell of the Kaylee we'd once known and loved more than life itself.
This shell of Kaylee never remembered us again. Never. Instead, she collapsed on the foyer floor shortly after asking the nurse to take her home, and never woke up again. She went into a coma that night. And two days later, two days before Christmas Eve, she passed away. With my mother and father at her bedside, holding her tiny, cold hands for dear life.
Every day I wished I could say that our little miracle had survived—that my baby sister, who had once fought so hard to stay my living, breathing miracle, was still alive. But that just wasn't the truth.
The truth was that she had fought hard to remember us, until it was, in her words, "Her time to go to heaven." The truth was that I hadn't killed my sister that night: the drunk driver in that semi had. And the truth was that, most importantly, no matter how you looked at it, we were given thirteen wonderful years with the sweetest girl in the world--and that, in itself, was a living, breathing miracle I would cherish forever.
To infinity and beyond.
Just like we always promised.
