"Sue, you're finally awake!" both Ray and Ben shouted at the same time.
"Calm down, she has already told me to be quiet, so if I have to be quiet so do you," Mike scolded and I was surprised. I'd never heard Mikey reprimand the others before. Sure he would fuss about what we did or what we said to him, but never had he ever scolded us. He honestly, didn't care enough about if we messed up or not to do that. I found it quite shocking, but not as shocking as what happened next.
I turned my head ever so slightly to get a look at Mike's face, and I saw tears streaming down from his eyes. I looked at him, my eyes wide with confusion. I was unable to believe what I was seeing. Was Mike really crying? I never seen him cry other than when our dog died. In fact that's the only time I have ever seen any of my brothers cry.
Thinking of them, I turned to look at the other two and I noticed they were also crying. What was going on? I thought I was only asleep for a few hours, but based off their reaction, it must've been much longer. I felt a wave of panic hit me and my hands started to tremble. I was so confused, what had happened to me. I thought I had just stayed outside for too long and, combined with not eating or drinking at all yesterday, I had ended up fainting. The way my brothers were acting let me to believe that something much more serious had happened to me. Was I really sick? Given the fact that they were crying, it seemed I was really sick. If I was really sick then was I okay now? I certainly did not feel okay. Does that mean that they can't fix what's wrong with me? Am I going to die?!?How long was I asleep? Was father back? Are my brothers still going to war? Was father going to war? Was he already at war and that's why he's not here right now? Where is mother?
Questions kept popping into my head, making me panic more. "Sue, why are you shaking? Are you all right, does something hurt?" Ray asked worriedly. "Don't make her talk her voice sounds terrible and it probably hurts for her to speak. Ray why don't you go get her something to drink? Ben why don't you go fetch mother?" Mike ask.
At the thought of any of them leaving, I started to panic. My shaking got worse, and I tried my best to speak, "No!" I cried out. I may have been trying to shout it, but it was no more loud than the mew of a new born and had the pitch of a bleat from a Billy goat. My brothers all froze in their place. I could not blame them even I was stunned by how bad I sounded. "Don't… (wheeze)… Go!(cough, cough)"
"Ssshhh, it's okay Sue, it's okay," Mike hushed me in caring tone and started to rub my hair. "I know you've always loved to talk, but right now you need to be quiet. Though I am glad you still have a lot to say it seems. It's not that I don't want to hear what you have to say and it's not that we're not gonna answer all your questions. It's just that we don't want you to hurt yourself by talking right now."
"Yes," Ben agreed, "you've been asleep for over a year and just recently you had quite the fit, if you try to talk too much right now you're going to hurt yourself even more. You need to take things slowly."
Over a year, I thought to myself! Why was I asleep that long? Why was I still in so much pain if I had been resting for over a year? What was this 'fit' he was talking about? What was happening to me? I thought. I started to shake even worse. My heart began thumping out of my chest, and my breathing started to quicken. It burned my lungs, but I couldn't stop it.
Mike shot Ben a glare and continued to rub my hair to try to calm me down. Ray, unable to stand the site of me in distress, walked over to me and grabbed my left hand. "Sue your okay and so are we. Nothing too big has happened since you've been asleep. We're still here. We haven't gone anywhere. Father came back after about a month. He wasn't very happy about the fact that you had passed out and we're still sick. He ended up having to go off to war, but not as a soldier. He is helping with remedies and other kinds of medicine. He went out to talk to someone, and it turns out that the Lord had no right to force anyone of our age into war. It turns out there had been a mistake in some documentation. We had all been documented as older than we were. Father was still required to go off to war, but not as a soldier." He stressed that last part because he knew it would be important to me.
"That's right," Mike added, "and we also had a talk with mother and father. They said once the war ends, or once we hit the age of 16, whichever comes first we're allowed to go down the mountain and out the forest, but we must come and visit often. So that issue has been resolved, apparently it's different for you tho. We don't know why our selves, but we don't think you'll have a huge issue with that seeing how much you love it here."
Ben, catching onto what the others were doing, chimed in as well, "That's right and we may not know exactly what happened to you, but we have been trying out different remedies for a very long time now. You've been getting better for the most part and now you're finally awake. You've never had any major down turns in your overall health so whatever this is that's afflicting you, you seem to be beating. We won't stop trying to figure out what's going. You will get better as long as we have any say in it!"
I stopped shaking and smiled at my brothers. My family always somehow knew exactly what to say to make me feel better without me having to tell them anything. I may I like to talk a lot, but I know I don't need to, my family always knows what's going on with me without me needing to say anything and I them, mostly. It's one of the things I love about my family.
Seeing that I had calm down, Ray let out a sigh of relief. "I'm going to go get you some water like Mike asked me to. Would you like rosewater or mint water? Squeeze my hand once for rosewater and twice for mint water." I smirk at this question Ray knew very well, which one I wanted, but I believed he just wanted to figure out if I was going to be able to answer questions by squeezing his hand. I squeezed once for rosewater, and he smiled at me, his face stained with streaks from the tears, but his smile shown brighter than the pain that was clearly written on his face from having to wait so long for me to wake up. In fact, all my brothers seem to have a sense of relief about them, but they also seem to rather weigh down.
Before Ray left, I took his hand in mine and opened his palm. I shifted my right hand over to his hand, which was being held by my left hand and began to right on it with my finger. 'What's wrong? Why do you three look so weighed down?' I asked.
Ray repeated what I wrote on his hand to the others. "Honestly Sue we feel a bit responsible for you ending up like this," Said Ben. "Yeah," Mikey started, "If we hadn't have ignored what was going on with you, you might not have ended up quite so sick. I mean you probably still would have gotten sick, but if we had checked up on you earlier, or had even taken a minute after that talk with mother and father, things could have turned out better for you."
"Your illness, at least in the beginning, was caused by a combination of stress, exhaustion, and dehydration. All those factors were a byproduct of the choices and actions we made. When we decided to talk to our parents that way we had gone over the night how it would affect them and decided it was a necessary evil, but never when we were discussing with each other about it did it occur to us to think about what it would do to you and for that we are very sorry. That is what is making us weighed down as you put," concluded Ben.
I shook my head and wrote on Ray's hand. 'It's not your fault. You couldn't have known that this would happen.' Ray sighed and responded, " you're right there's no way we could've known this would've happened, but we should've at least considered how it might affect you. You're an important part of our family. Yes, you may be a little annoying and talk far too much but your our sister and we love you and we worry about you. We should've worried more about you this time before it was too late." The others nodded their agreement.
It seems like my brothers have changed a bit while I was asleep, but that was okay we had time to catch up. I was gonna need their help to recover after all. I took Ray's hand once more and wrote. 'I am not mad. I forgive you three. Now may I please have some rosewater.' Ray smiled brightly and I glared at him until he repeated what I had written on his hand to the other two. Mikey started crying again and Ben walked over closer to me and gave me a kiss on my forehead. All three of them looked as if I had taken a weight off their shoulders.
"I'll go get you that rosewater," Ray said. "And I will go get mother if it is okay with you, Sue, if I leave?" Asked Ben. I slowly nodded my approval wincing at the pain it caused my head. "Stop moving around so recklessly," fussed Mikey, "We have already told you you're going to hurt yourself if you keep doing things like that." I gave him a look of discontent, which, for some reason caused him to smile. "I'm so glad you're awake," he said with more tears coming out of his eyes.