Subject #013 | ✓

Chapter 40

My first thought is that I must have heard him wrong.

The constant beeping of a heartbeat monitor is the only noise heard in the room. My mom, dad, and I stand, watching the baby, eyes watering and hands clasped in hope.

The doctors have been telling us that they don't know whether he'll live. We've taken it as our responsibility to watch him, waiting eagerly for any reason he would live and not die.

Mom's eyes are trained on the machine, eyes flashing with it as it beeps. It's the only way we know that our little baby is still alive and breathing. For now. The doctors aren't sure why he came out with a birth defect, much less what the defect is, but now it's all we can do to hope that he's a fighter and makes it through the day.

Hope. Hope is such a useless thing. At six years old, everything is a blur. A flash of my mom's tears, the slamming of cabinets upstairs when I'm supposed to be in bed, the times when I think I hear my dad cry himself to sleep but convince myself it's only his snores.

Why does hope exist when all it does is fill you with regret for even having hope in the first place?

So I hide my face in my dad's stomach, hands knotted in his t-shirt, tears darkening it. Even after only six years of living, I knew that the little child had no chance of surviving.

We stood there for hours, watching the child sleep. He looked eerily calm, especially for a baby in sleep. His tiny hands clutch at the thin white bed sheet and his squirms a little. Back then, I wish I could tell what was going on inside his head. Maybe then I would have the strength or power to prevent what came afterward.

When the beeping turned long and monotone, I didn't know what to think. I probably should have cried; after all, my would-be baby brother was dead. But instead, all I did was stare, empty. 

So while my mom buried her head into dad's neck and cried, I simply stared at the baby's chest, waiting for the breath that would never come.

"What was his name?" I asked later.

"It would have started with a C," my mother responded. Would have. What a frightening pair of words.

There's no way my baby brother could be alive and well. 

But the way Jax says it, with wide eyes, I know for a fact that somehow he's not lying.

"What?" I choke out, disbelief obvious. He winces at my harsh tone, but if you've believed that your baby brother—your sibling—has been dead for 11 years, you'd be confused if you found out that blood still rushes through their veins and their heart still beats in time.

"Your brother is still alive. I met him." The shock of the words hits me like a tidal wave. I stagger backward, fingers meeting the cold surface of the wall at the back of the cell. Alix looks ultimately confused, looking from Jax to me and then back to Jax again with narrowed eyes.

The way Jax says I met him leads me to wonder how long he's been here. Has he been mixed up with this for a while? Was our whole relationship a lie? Was he happy to finally break up with me?

But instead, the only words that pass through my lips are, "What is his name?"

Jax inhales sharply, as if a shiver went down his spine. His eyes are anywhere but mine, and they stare directly into a certain corner of the room. He looks nervous. His hands are clasping and unclasping in front of his body. If I were to touch them, they'd probably be clammy with sweat.

"Jax," I whisper, pulling his eyes to me. His eyes outline my face, taking in my disfigured state, my messed up blue/red hair, my wild eyes, my clothes, and Alix subconsciously moving in front of me as if to protect me. "Answer the question. If you really care about me at all, you will tell me right now."