4 / Kévin

POV Kévin

This sentence has always resonated in me:

"Life is wise to deceive us, for if it told us what it had in store for us, we would refuse to be born."

I think my childhood is the perfect expression of all this, questioning my own existence and wishing I had never been born. Sick, mocked, abused, humiliated, pitied, unloved, betrayed, disappointed, lost, and yet treading on this earth. And you don't have to go back very far to see where my ordeal began as a child.

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Kévin 10 years old

In an apartment alone with his sister Kévin was coughing without the slightest lull. From his mouth came out a large quantity of blood, the floor and the toilet bowl where he was vomiting were already filled with blood.

"Ahhh..." He gasped for a brief moment of respite.

"Take your time big brother. Said Mary trying to help her brother.

As a sharp pain ran through him making him writhe on the floor in his own blood.

"Ah, Ah ahhhhhh." Kévin began to shout, holding his chest, his mouth bleeding.

The pain was unbearable unbearable as if his heart was torn away his cries intensifying. Under the tetanized glance of his sister who could only shed tears.

POV Marie

"Big brother! I'm calling an ambulance, hold on!" (Marie)

A few minutes later a siren sounded and my brother was taken away. After a whole hour of vomiting blood and writhing in pain. Of course, there was no way I was going to leave my brother alone and I went upstairs with the paramedics. After we arrived at the hospital, I stayed up all night with him, as the doctors were finally able to stabilize him.

I was now sitting there looking at him lying in his hospital bed once again. As far as I can remember and from what I was told his illness started around his 1st birthday and only got worse as time went on. His health deteriorated little by little from the time he was 1 until he was 5 years old and he had violent fever attacks accompanied by vomiting that almost killed him on several occasions.

We tried to heal him with an awakened healer, but even an awakened healer was not able to heal him.

"I have never seen such a disease, medicines, treatments, mana healing nothing worked for your son." Then announced the doctor to my mother who burst into tears.

"What are we supposed to do doctor..." My mother then asked.

"The only solution is to prepare you for the worst, I'm sorry." Said the doctor as he left the room.

These memories marked my childhood: my 5 year old brother lying on a hospital bed with sore eyes despite the anesthetics to make him suffer less. My mother taking my brother's hand and putting it on his crying face, while our father was not present to support us.

"My little Kévin." She said trembling seeing her child seriously ill.

My very religious mother then started to pray it was the only refuge and glimmer of hope she had left. Every day, every hour, she dedicated her time to pray, hoping that a miracle would save her beloved son.

"My God, I am sick, I am weak, my languor invades my heart and my body... I am like all sick people: I hide and think too much about myself; I torment myself and mask my anxiety... I pretend to live... Our God, my God, deliver me from my illness. Heal me from my distress with your tenderness, so that I may live with your strength in my weaknesses.

It was one of the prayers she recited near my brother and as if her faith and prayers had been heard my brother began to recover. At that moment this could be called a miracle.

A whole year followed where my brother recovered, it was his sixth year, a true miracle for the doctors and especially for us. My brother's ordeal seemed to be coming to an end and he was finally able to go to school for the first time. I was able to stay and spend my first moments with him. Caring, loving, social, the games, the drawings, the bedtime stories that my mother would tell us before we went to sleep. The warmth of his body when we slept together, my mother's reprimands when we did something stupid. The joys of playing with our little brother Yan with whom Kevin spent a lot of time playing and telling stories. We thought it was the end of the tunnel but reality caught up with us.

After my brother turned 7 and I turned 6 everything changed again, I remember, I was there. It was a beautiful afternoon in the schoolyard playing with our other classmates, my brother and I playing soccer. As he was running towards the goal, I saw him suddenly collapse on the ground. Several hoarse noises rang out before a shrill cry of pain froze my blood. My brother was not moving, but screaming in pain as if a beast had its throat slit, its body having taken on a deformed shape.

As the cries of pain alerted the teachers who headed our way.

"What happened." Asked one of them as Kévin's screams got louder and louder.

My tears, starting to run down my face I just said what I saw.

"He fell and started screaming." (Marie)

The teachers then tried to move my brother, but by making that they make him scream even louder. It was when we called the fire department, that we realized what a horrible thing was happening to him, so horrible that the teachers and fire department were petrified

"My God! All... All his bones are broken!" Said one of the firefighters horrified.

My brother was rushed to the hospital, his arms, legs, torso and bones almost completely shattered. The doctors were still perplexed and unable to heal him, so he lay in a hospital bed for 2 years until his bones healed by themselves. The only thing he could do was watch TV in his room, or listen to us talking to him. And despite everything that happened to him, he kept smiling and always had this cheerful look on his face trying to make us laugh instead of crying.

And one day for a moment while my mother was teaching him a lesson, that joy disappeared for a moment to ask my mother something.

"Mom, am I going to live like this my whole life?" (Kévin).

"I don't know."

My brother's eyes moistened and his voice this breaking, he continued.

"Mom is what I deserve this?" (Kévin)

"No you didn't." Replied my mother now unable to hold back her tears and mine either.

While we were going through this ordeal, our father was still absent. And after the bones, my brother's organs started to explode one by one. The less vital ones like the spleen, the stomach, the reproductive organs, the colon, the gallbladder, the appendix, then the vital organs started to explode too. Lungs, liver, pancreas, kidneys, the only thing keeping my brother alive was the continuous care of specialized awake people coupled with machines.

Am I going to die? That was the question he asked us, but we were hopeful and told him no, you will not die. Because it was the only thing that also kept us alive. And deep in his heart, I'm sure he knew we were lying to him.

Then it was around the heart to give out then the brain and it was the year of his 10th birthday that my brother died. As his lifeless body lay there my mother and I each holding a hand our tears could not help but flow. While his expression even under anesthesia was painful, today he looked peaceful.

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Death is so familiar to us but yet we are ignorant of it we simply know that it is the end of life, no sorrow or material object is brought to it. It is the blackness, the end of our earthly ills and torments. It is the beginning of an eternal rest or an eternal suffering. And in reality we know nothing because the truth is at the bottom of the abyss and no mortal has ever returned.