Until I Found you

Eleven

Then one day it all came to an end... It was that simple, it ended so abruptly that I failed to grasp the enormity of what had happened.

 Sabahattin Ali - Madonna in a Fur Coat

Serkan was kicking a ball around in the garden when he arrived. Red crazy hair, tall frame, and sweet smile. Serkan stopped in his tracks and ran as fast as he could to greet him. Only the person before him wasn't his older brother returning from university. It was his father. The man's somber expression confused Serkan. Then again, Alptekin had never had much patience for him; Serkan was too obsessive, too rowdy, too unlike his father.

"Abim nerede?" Serkan asked him, but his father didn't respond. He watched him reproachfully as if Serkan had done something he shouldn't.

"Go inside, to your room, now," his father ordered. And Serkan did, always looking to please him.

Serkan heard screaming and crying a little later. His parents were fighting again. He locked his bedroom door, turned the record player on, and, wearing his magician's cape, set himself on the floor with the magic set his brother had given him. Alp had been teaching him how to do some tricks with cards, and Serkan had picked up a book about magic tricks at the library earlier in the week. He spent much of the afternoon browsing through its pages. And, for a while, Serkan forgot what was happening in his home.

"SERKAN," he heard through the rock music he was listening to, then someone banged on the door. "Serkan, open up," he heard again.

"What's wrong, Dilek Abla?" He asked, opening quickly. "It's your brother. They've brought him here. And he wants to see you."

Serkan set the props he held in his hands on his dresser and followed Dilek through his home. His brother's room was next to his. Why was Dilek taking him elsewhere?

That's when he saw him, Alp, lying on a bed in their library. He was pale and scrawny, contrasting Serkan's image of him the last time he'd seen him.

"Kardeşim," Alp said with a tender smile and raised his hand slightly for Serkan to come to him.

Serkan approached him, weary.

"What's wrong with you, Abi?" He asked, afraid to come too close and hurt him yet running his fingers through the tubes that connected an oxygen tank to his nose.

"I was playing with my band a few weeks ago, and I felt ill after our show. Belkis, you know how she is... she forced me to go see the doctor," Alp said softly.

"I hate going to the doctor," Serkan commiserated.

"Right, I do, too," Alp echoed. "But I guess I should have gone sooner," he lamented.

"What do you mean?" Serkan queried, acknowledging this might not be any common malady his brother had.

"They say something is wrong with my lungs," Alp wheezed.

"Is it pneumonia, like Anne got last year and spent a week at the hospital?"

Alp smiled fondly at his brother, "It's something worse than that. Something that won't get better."

"Nonsense. I know it blows to have to spend time at the hospital; they give you medicine and force you to lay in bed. But you get better. Anne did. The doctor said she had to slow down and rest. That all that traveling wasn't good for her if she didn't take care of herself like she should. Maybe that's what you need, too. To stay put for a while. No touring around with your band," Serkan affirmed.

"Sometimes I look at you and forget you're only 9," Alp told him, grabbing Serkan's hand gently. "Serkan, I'm dying."

Serkan pulled his hand away and shook his head, "No, you're not. You can't. You're Alp; you're my older brother. You're going to marry silly Belkis and work with Baba at the holding. You're going to buy a home in the city, and we are going to build a tree house together. We are going to travel to Apollo's temple to see the stars fall, and you're going to let me play with you one day. You promised me."