Free The House of Hawthorne by Erika Robuck Page A

tuberculosis of the spine.This once strapping lad is now pale and gaunt, and is recently confined to his bed because his legs no longer support him. He bears his pain like a saint, and almost never complains. I could learn a lesson or two from him.
    “Have you increased your morphine, my dear?” I ask as he winces from a cough, and attempts to adjust his large frame in the small waterbed my father had made to prevent sores.
    I cross the room and sit on the chair next to him, sliding my arms under his back and helping him shift onto his side. He tries to turn his head away when he coughs, but he is too weak, and I am hit with the wind of his wet, rancid breath. I draw back, and he apologizes as soon as the coughing ceases.
    “Do not worry,” I say, pushing his thick, dark hair off his clammy forehead. “At least the air came from your upper region instead of your lower.”
    He starts to laugh at my vulgarity, and begins another fit. This time I am able to reach under him and fluff his pillow so he is more elevated, which seems to bring him some ease.
    The morphine drops lie on his bedside table. I know he is trying to make Father’s prescriptions for him last, but he is rationing too meagerly and not getting the full relief that is at his fingertips. I lift the bottle and shiver at my wish to ingest it, but I have had my daily dose, and force myself to pour his. I assist George in drinking from a spoon until it is empty, and the effect comes quickly. I feel my own shoulders relax as I witness his visible relief.
    “Thank you, Sophy,” he whispers, and closes his eyes. He is soon breathing deeply and regularly, but I am unable to tear myself away.
    Another brother will soon be gone. I will have no fellow invalid with whom to yell jokes back and forth across the hallway, no one sicker than me, no man in my life to tease and converse with me. My sisters are so concerned with shaping and educating me that our relationship is often tedious. My other brother, Nat, is preoccupied with his new wife and young babe, as he should be, and has little to do with me. Father cares for me in his strange, quiet way when he is home, but must work as much as possible. George is my small island of love. I do not want to start mourning him before he is gone, but I cannot help it.
    I stare at him a moment longer before I am impelled to step into my room for my sketch pad. I wipe my tears with the back of my arm, and once again sit in the chair next to George. Without a thought or prayer, I begin to move my pencil across the paper, and soon, for the first time in months, I have completed a portrait. I look from it to him and know I will use this to create a model—a bas-relief—of my brother that we may have to look on even after he has left us.
    Here is a man who is truly ill—a young man who will predecease his parents and siblings. While he lies dying of tuberculosis, I recline in my hammock, acting as if I will die from aches in the head. My shame burns until I can no longer bear to reflect upon it, and I leave George’s bedside.

8

    F ather and I sit next to each other at the table in my room, our heads bathed in candlelight, bent over my illustrations of Cuban flora. He thinks I should try my hand at medical illustration, but the mere thought of such technical work and constant deadlines makes my head ache. I push my knuckles into my temples, and he looks at me with a frown.
    “Have you had your doses today?” he asks.
    I am confident he has not inventoried his morphine supply, and I wish to lie so I may get more. Father may be intelligent enough to be a doctor, but his incompetence with numbers is the cause of our poverty. I cannot hate him for it, though. He allows his wife and daughters freedoms of education and employment other men would not tolerate, either because he supports it or is too tired to argue it, and he is ever at work, attempting to seek a cure for my condition. My thoughts linger in the fantasy of amorphine