Like Fridge Magnets

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

ADAM

       Even now, I’m not sure how it happened. One moment we were talking about how comfortable she was, and in the next she was asking me about my tattoo.

And I was telling her the truth.

“He was diagnosed with Juvenile Onset Parkinson’s disease when he was twelve years old. My Mum was devastated, so incredibly heartbroken. Her oldest son was sick and there was no way for her to take it away from him,” I told her, “My Dad kept us all together, and we all somehow came to terms with it. By all, I mean my brother too,” I said starring hard at her little hand in mine. I wanted her to know more about me, and then maybe she would open up to me and be less guarded around me.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” she whispered to me after the silence between us became deafening. I shook my head and cleared my throat. I needed to get this out.

“I want to,” I reassured her, “If you want to listen that is.”

“I’m listening,” she told me as she smiled at me. I smiled back at her, Elayna may want to seem tough to people, closed off even, but she’s always been generous with her smiles, aiming them at everybody who needed them.

“When Adrian turned sixteen, he got involved with the wrong crowd. He stopped listening to the doctors and started to self-medicate. First with some weed here and there, but soon enough it turned into a morphine addiction,” I looked away from her as the memories of my brother during this time came back to me, focusing my gaze on the shadows on the ceiling I continued, “At first, he didn’t think of it as an addiction. He refused to believe that what he was doing was dangerous. Soon enough though, he changed his mantra from that to ‘what does it matter I’m going to be incompetent soon enough, so back off and let me have my fun’,” my voice cracked at the end so I stopped and took a deep breath before continuing.

“He was seventeen when he realised what his addiction was doing to our mum, so he decided to get clean. He didn’t want to go to rehab, instead he asked me to help him,” I put my free hand through my hair as his first withdrawal episode came flashing back to me, “At first he was doing great, it was spring break so I had all the time in the day to help him. He cut his ties with his old crowd and started to focus on getting better. He was so full of life those first few days,” I smiled at the old memories of the glimpses of my old older brother I saw in him, “but that was because the symptoms of his drug withdrawals hadn’t started yet.”

“They hit him in an instant, one second we were playing on the Wii, the next he was withering on the floor burning hot one moment then freezing cold the next, I held him down so he wouldn’t hurt himself when he started to thrash around. I had been on the basketball team for a year then, so I was much bigger than him. He thrashed against me, begging for one last hit then cursing at me when I refused to give him any morphine, it felt like hours until he finally gave up and went to sleep. I remember almost giving up and going out to find him what he wanted at some point, seeing him look so,” pausing I stopped to think of a fitting enough word, “vulnerable, I suppose. That was the first and probably the hardest episode I’d ever had to go through with him. After that we’d decided it was time to tell our parents about him getting clean. Mum found loads of tips online to make it easier for him, the best one being to jump into a freezing bath tub filled with cold water and ice until his episode went away or he fell asleep,” Elayna had been so quiet for a while so I looked over at her to make sure she was still awake. She caught my eye and just smiled at me, silently telling me that I could stop if I wanted to.

I didn’t. So I continued, “Adrian had been clean for five months when suddenly one of his worst withdrawals hit him, it was just me and Adrian in the house and it had been the first time since the very first episode that he had gone through one with just me there. I dragged him with me to the kitchen and grabbed a huge bag of ice, something that was permanently in our freezer, and took him to the bath tub. I threw the entire bag in there as I filled the tub up with cold water. Before I knew it, we were in the freezing tub and I was holding him down to make sure that he didn’t leave. When he fell asleep I carried him to his room, got him changed and left him there to find some dry clothes for myself,” I breathed in deep as I prepared to tell her about the part that haunted my dreams for months.