Narrative

Narrative

            It was the day before my seventeenth birthday and my brother and I had just gotten back from the gym. My brother and I had a good relationship. His name is Jake and he is 2 years and 2 days older than me, making this the day after his nineteenth birthday. Jake is a stubborn, selfish, egotistical person, but he’s still my brother and I still love him.

            After we finished up our routine at the gym and came hom3, we started t0 make our starchy breakfast. While the eggs were cooking, we set a pot of water to a boil for our hot tea. Jake and I, being as impatient as we were, went out to the garage to smoke a cigarette. We talked about our workout, our starving stomachs, and we talked about what most smokers talks about: quitting. After we finished inhaling our toxic, chemical-filled cigarettes, we headed inside to eat our breakfast and drink our tea. There were only two problems. There was only one bag of our best tea left and secondly my brother was an asshole.

            We argued about who should get the last tea bag and the normal argument escaladed into a heated one. After a short few moments, we were yelling at each other and beginning to shove one another. Jake was always a fighter, whereas I was the type of guy that tried to calm everything down, sort of like the Parasympathetic Nervous System. So, I eventually held him up against the wall in an attempt to calm him down. He ended up pouring out my hot water, so in return, I dumped his. The next thing I know, I see a fist rocketing towards my nose. As soon as he made contact, I was drowning in my own blood. I knew my nose was broken. I had never been more furious with my older brother. I told him, “You literally just broke my nose.” I stormed upstairs to get a look in the mirror. I saw a crescent moon in between my mouth and my eyes. I walked down the stairs and out the door to insufflate on another cigarette and call my father. He answered with his typical line, “Hey, how’s it going buddy?”

            My father was a very generous, kindhearted, and gentle man but at the same time he could put his foot down and crack his whip harder than Indiana

Jones. His name is Linc. I didn’t bother responding to his question. Instead, holding in the harsh smoke, I said, “Jake broke my nose.” He asked me, clearly confused, “What do you mean?” With the cigarette not doing its job of calming me down, I exclaimed, “Jake punched me and now my nose looks like a fucking crescent moon!” “God damn it, what a fucking idiot! Alright, I’m on my way home!” Then it was just the cigarette, and I waiting.

            My dad got home and we got into the car. When we got to St. Ann’s hospital, we of course, had to fill out paperwork and wait roughly the longest 20 minutes of my existence. To stop the bleeding, a nurse approached me and said, “My name is Erin, just so you know who to hate.” She squeezed one end of this clothespin-like contraption and the other end opened. She slid it onto my nose and it never stopped applying pressure. When we got out of the waiting room and into the back, they did some x-rays and told me my nose was broken and that I had to have surgery.

            I had to wait two weeks for my nose to repair itself so that the surgeon could re-break it and put it into place. After those long two weeks, I was in another waiting room. The doctors wheeled me back through the anfractuous hallways of this dimly lit facility. Once I was in the surgery room, also happened to be the brightest room I have ever been in, the anesthesiologist told me to take 10 deep breaths of the anesthesia. I didn’t get to 4. I woke up and looked around wondering where I was and where my dad was. A nurse hurried over and asked if I needed anything. I asked for a Vicodin and had one in my mouth 10 seconds later. The nurse wheeled me out to my dad, the one who had waiting up in the early morning, the one who dropped everything and came to my aid, I had never been so happy to see my old man.