The room was startlingly silent. I lay next to my sister on her hospital bed, on my side, facing her, with my arm across her torso, and we had been staring into each other's eyes for at least a minute or two. Her unspoken request had our past replaying in my mind.
When she was 1 year old, and I was four, I accidentally hit her face. It was nothing serious, but she did start crying in our mother's arms. Mom wasn't mad, but after she coaxed my sister back into silence, she told me that I needed to be more careful because it was my job to look out for my sister and to protect her.
At the time, I did not think much of it, but it was something that stuck with me over the years. I remembered those words every time my sister fell when she was learning to walk, and every time she hurt herself with a toy.
It developed a sense of purpose in me. It made me feel powerful.
When she was old enough to sleep in an actual bed, we shared a room, and sometimes she got scared and crawled into my bed with me. We'd curl up with her back in my chest and my arm over her, and she'd sleep soundly with me guarding her against whatever threat her imagination concocted. Eventually, she got her own room, but on the rare occasion, she'd sneak in and snuggle up.
In my early teens, it became more about watching out for her as we played outside since she wanted to do things like climb trees and play on monkey bars as I did, but I never discouraged her. Part of protecting her was teaching her to be able to protect herself.
I didn't want her to be a weak damsel in distress, so I would playfully wrestle with her a lot and generally be rough without being too rough. I made sure it was always fun for her.
Eventually, she just seemed to be getting a little clumsier, but it progressed to a point that became very concerning to our parents, and her general health seemed to be decreasing.
It turned out that she had a rare degenerative disorder that was slowly degrading her muscle tissue. I was told the name of it once but blocked it out soon after expressing my desire to never hear it mentioned by name again.
For the most part, everyone was able to accommodate me without inconvenience, but even when it was mentioned by people who didn't know any better, I mentally rejected it.
It was something I had no ability to guard her against, and I couldn't tolerate having that name in my memory. I hated that disorder for making me feel powerless, so I chose to ignore it as an entity. That was the only way I was able to stay positive for her.
When she got to the point where she was stuck in a hospital bed, I stayed with her as much as I could, and our lack of privacy developed a special form of communication between us. Well, the lack of privacy as well as an unwillingness to give voice to certain tough realities to bear.
Certain facts and feelings were expressed indirectly through passing comments and jokes. Often, things were not realized until pieces of the puzzle were put together.
In time, when her constant presence in a hospital was no longer required, our parents bought her a very large and elaborate hospital bed to put in her bedroom. They wanted to make her as comfortable as she could possibly be.
I was living in an apartment at that time, mainly to be closer to the hospital, but the move back home defeated that purpose. To make matters worse, a live-in nurse had moved into my old room, so I could not move back home. The consolation was that I didn't have to worry about visiting hours, and I at least had a reasonably comfortable sofa to sleep on if need be.
The increase in privacy was the biggest boon, but we still maintained our secret communication, and the bed was wide enough that I could lay close alongside her while we read, watched movies, or talked. In an odd turn, this was giving me a sense of security and reassurance.
On occasion, we found ourselves just silently staring at each other with soft smiles. Despite her thinness from lack of activity, she still looked relatively healthy. She had a good diet and she had help getting what exercise she could, even though she could not leave the bed.
The waves in her long, black hair still shone, and there was still a sparkle in her eyes. She managed to remain a beautiful woman in defiance of everything working against her, but maybe that was just my opinion.
From about age fifteen, it became increasingly apparent that she probably wouldn't make it to age twenty, and that was being optimistic.
I admired her ability to joke about the various things that she would never be able to do, but in the later months of her seventeenth year, our unspoken language became a little more regret oriented. Her impending eighteenth birthday cemented certain realities in her mind.
She would never have a boyfriend or go on a date. She would never get married or have kids. More to the point, she would never experience intimacy with a man.
So as I lay beside her, my heart began to pound as I debated what I would eventually do with my hand that rested on her right ribcage. Her eyes stared into mine patiently but made no request, themselves.
I began to doubt my interpretation of her unspoken words. Did she actually want me to do anything, or was I imagining it? And if I wasn't imagining it, then could I do anything? She was my sister, after all.
It was a little suspicious that we just happened to have the house to ourselves for the entire day and night after her birthday party, so it was not a question of opportunity but a question of willingness. I'd never felt anything sexual towards her before, but I did still have the overwhelming drive to do everything I could do to protect her, and in this case, it was protecting her from sadness and regret.
As if of its own accord, my hand moved about an inch higher and her eyes flashed ever so slightly wider for the briefest of moments. The web of my thumb and index finger was practically at the underside of the small mound of her pajama shirt. Her eyes were still making no request, but what stood out to me was the fact that they were not trying to dissuade me either.
She was not trying to pressure me in the slightest, but it became clear to me that she, at the very least, did not object. That's when I noticed that I could feel her heart pounding. My hand moved up slightly again, and then she closed her eyes as she turned her face upward.
I think she knew that I would not have been able to do anything while she was looking at me. This was her request. This was her permission. I no longer had any excuses.
My fingers slid around the swell of her breast, and her lips parted slightly to inhale a sudden, shallow breath.
A jolt shot through me, thankfully not causing me to flinch. I was doing this for her, but the fact was that I'd never done that with anyone before. I was effectively dedicated to my sister during the course of her degeneration. While it had never been sexual, I had eyes only for her.
