It was three in the morning and the house was holding itself still, as always, afraid that if it emitted the slightest creak, it would wake my father’s wrath. A shaft of moonlight illuminated the dust that floated by my eyelids, my own personal constellation. I blinked and the specks fluttered away.  The house shivered and I pulled the blankets up to my ears. Stay still, I whispered but my ears strained to hear what the sound had been, to what had woken me up. Stay. But I had to move. I slipped out of my sheets and tiptoed to the door. Looking out, I saw only blackness, a void that I knew I shouldn’t cross. But I moved towards my door anyway to look onto the stairs’ landing.

CRASH. 

It was a sharp sound, like my mother’s china cabinet had been given the shove it needed to finally meet the floor. I ducked, falling to my knees in as controlled a manner as I could manage. There was silence except for my brother’s soft sobs and I knew that I should not have crossed through the doorway. My mother flew down the stairs.

“I’m calling an ambulance.” Her fingers clicked across the keypad, her last act of defiance before resigning us to our fate.

Time stood still as a palpable scream shuddered through the air. There was a fumbling, hard footsteps beat against the floor. The phone shot through the air, but it was too late. The authorities had been notified.

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“I’m done,” I could hear my mother’s strength, clear only in the grogginess of the dawn’s haze.

“This is my house.”

Sammy, I thought. Hang in there. 

We could hear the siren wailing in the distance. I moved to the window, feeling my way along my dresser and tripping over discarded clothes. Faster, I thought. I could swear I heard the rate of the siren increase. 

“We’ll leave.” My mother compromised even when she was taking a stand.

The ambulance’s bright lights emerged from the trees, cutting through the darkness in swaths. A man and a woman pulled up and leapt out of the ambulance, shouldering bags as they walked. Their stride was unbreakable. They ushered themselves into the house and emerged immediately with my brother on a board that they carried between them. They placed my brother in the back of the ambulance with care. My father tried to follow. The woman held her hand up and gestured to the car that was parked in the driveway. My father stepped back, affronted not because he was not allowed to ride with his son, but because someone had refused him his request. I watched them drive away, a protective shield of light for my brother, until the ambulance was a bright dot on the horizon.