savior ≫ z.m. [completed]

5

“What happened?” I ask one of the paramedics, staring at my mother. She was deathly pale, her skin almost blue.

“Alcohol poisoning,” the paramedic yells over the sirens. “She’s going to be okay. You’re lucky your brother came today, she could have died.”

I choke on the water they provided me. Brother?

“Um, my brother?” I ask, confused.

“Yeah, that guy, Jake, I think his name was,” he frowns at me. “I mean, he said that this was his mother,”

Why the hell is my brother here? The last words he ever said to me were ‘Vegas, o holy land of the strippers, here I come,’

“Do you know where he went?” I ask.

“Um, I think he was the one who called 911 about your mother, but we didn’t find him at your house or anywhere on the property,” he responds.

When we reach the hospital, they take her into an emergency room and I'm forced to wait out in the lobby. I scroll through my phone, deciding to go on Tumblr to pass time.

One hour, two hours, three hours go by before a doctor steps out of the emergency area.

"Callie Montgomery?" he asks as he approaches me. The doctor's an old balding guy with wire framed glasses and a friendly smile.

"That's me," I say quietly. He nods and walks over to me.

"Your mother is going to be okay. If nobody had called 911, she'd be dead by now. Were you the one that found her?"

I shake my head. "My brother was," I mumble.

"Ah. Well, you better thank him." he says with a warm smile. I fake a smile back at him. The first thing I'm going to do when I see Jake is kick him in the balls.

"We prefer not to have visitors right after we're done treating the patient, you'll most likely be able to see her in about an hour. You're welcome to wait here," he says.

I thank him and decide to wait. I stare at the clock, the minute hand ticking as slow as humanly possible.

I finally get the guts to do something I've been thinking of for the past hour; call Jake. I pull out my phone and dial his number.

"Hey, this is Jake," says a masculine voice at the other end. It's really loud, and I can barely hear his voice. I choke back a sob and temporarily lose my voice. "Hello?" he shouts. "If this is another one of those silly ass prank calls, I swear to god-"

"Jake," I cut him off. The other end of the line is silent with the exception of the background noise before he cheers in the background.

"HEYYYYY! Callie-flower! Little sis! How ya doin'? I missed you! How's Danielle? Is mom okay? She looked pretty terrible when I found her, I guess calling 911 was the best thing to do so I did. I'm so glad you finally decided to call me!" he shouts into the phone. I have to hold my phone about a foot away from my ears to prevent his loud voice from deafening me.

"Where are you?" I ask. I have to repeat it five times before he finally understands me.

"I dunno, some bar I found in town. It's fuckin' awesome here," There's only one bar in this town; and and it's not a good place to be.

"Are you drunk?" I groan. This is not good.

"Well, I took a couple of body shots off this smokin' hot chick, it was some pretty hard liquor. Damn. That stuff was strong as hell,"

"Ok, listen to me. I'm going to come and get you, don't you dare go anywhere,"

"Sure thing, sis," he says with a drunk laugh and hangs up.

So this is what my brother decided to do with his life.

I look at the clock. 45 more minutes until I can see my mom. I rush out of the hospital and call a taxi. I tell the driver to go to the bar and he eyes me warily.

"You sure? It's pretty tough down there," he says, looking at me with concern. I nod.

"Yeah, take me there," I say quietly. He shrugs and drives out of the hospital parking lot.