Free Really Something by Shirley Jump

Loman is terrible. I think she hates me. And she can’t spell, for God’s sake.” Katie pouted, then leaned against the pillows. Her eyes were bleary, her words starting to slur, the esses becoming shs. It wouldn’t be long, Duncan knew, before the worst sides of Katie emerged. Well, finished emerging, given the stoneware attack.
    One of her friends—most likely Darla—thinking she was doing her a favor, had probably come by today, bringing along a bottle of rum, or vodka, or whatever Katie’s taste ran toward that day. They’d tell themselves they were doing Katie a favor, even as they left the bottles on the nightstand and fled the room, leaving behind the shell of the Katie they used to know.
    For five years, Katie had been his responsibility. He was expected to be the guardian of the gate, the one who kept the Darlas of the world away. Saved Katie from the punch of Captain Morgan’s—and herself. Duncan was her older brother, the only one Katie had left.
    He was supposed to take care of his little sister. But so far, he’d done a truly shitty job.
    He tried. He failed. And every day, he woke up with better intentions and hopes that someday, life would return to some semblance of the normal he used to know.
    Even as doctor after doctor told him that was impossible. That the sooner he accepted his sister’s condition, the better.
    If he accepted the permanent paralysis, the hopelessness of Katie’s future, that meant accepting his part in making her that way. To Duncan, his guilt was the eight-hundred pound gorilla in Katie’s bedroom, weighing on his chest every time he crossed that threshold.
    So he ignored the guilt by laying out the Scrabble tiles and telling Katie jokes about his forecast, Wally, the wonders of the Magic 8 Ball, always avoiding the real truth.
    Because if he allowed that weight of fault to rest on his shoulders, it would surely crush him.
    And where would that leave Katie?
    Duncan planted his hands on either side of his sister, fixed his gaze on the telltale cracks of red in her eyes. “Who brought it to you today?”
    She averted her gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    â€œI cleaned all the booze out of this house yesterday. And last week. And the week before that. And every damned week since you decided a bottle was a better way of dealing with this than therapy.”
    She flung back the blankets and showed him her legs. Immobile for five years, they were thin and pale, more like birch sticks than limbs. “Therapy isn’t going to fix this, so go to hell, Duncan.” Her anger flared a momentary spark in her defeatist drunk. “If I want to drink, I will. It’s the only thing I have.”
    â€œYou have me, Katy-bird,” he said, lapsing into her childhood nickname, wishing he could as easily turn back the clock. For him, but most of all for Katie.
    Tears shimmered in her eyes but she whisked them away with the back of her hand. “You and this friggin’ prison. Yeah, sure, I can take a ride in that stupid chair”—she winged a hand toward the seat that had gathered more dust than anything else—“but it’s a goddamned circle, isn’t it? It always comes right back here.” She smacked the bed and looked away.
    Every day, he lost the battle, but Duncan still fought with arguments, orders, pleas. And Katie went right on drinking away her pain.
    And he went right on being Atlas, only with a load of guilt on his shoulders instead of the four corners of the world.
    He leaned forward, pulled open her nightstand drawer and removed the half-empty bottle of Bacardi.
    â€œBastard,” she whispered, then turned away and buried her head in her pillows. “Get the hell away from me. I hate you.”
    Duncan left the room and shut the door, leaning against it. He put the bottle on the hall table, closed his eyes and drew in a breath. Maybe he should