When I woke up, with a broken tibia and a ruptured spleen, he was dead.
Gone.
The trauma to his head had been too severe and they hadn’t been able to save him. I had been unconscious for so long, he was already buried when I came to. When my mom told me, I didn’t utter a single syllable. I didn’t look at her, and when she tried to hug and comfort me, I scrambled as far away from her as I could.
He had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember—how could he be gone?
For months, I wanted to follow him, unable and unwilling to cope in a world where he no longer existed. My chest was a huge echoing cavern of emptiness where once my heart had beat for him. My mental state impeded my physical recovery. Complications ensued, and they had to operate on me.
To be perfectly honest,
