They Ignored My Weeping Sores to Treat His Fake Tears

§01

I had just walked out of the university health services when my grandparents’ call came through.

On the other end, my grandfather’s voice was frantic.

He said my brother’s illness was bizarre, that several major hospitals couldn’t figure out what was wrong with him, and that they were driving to my city overnight.

He finished with, “Be ready. You need to help look after him.”

I looked down at the rash spreading from under my sleeve.

Four months.

It had been four months.

From the first scattered red dots to the weeping sores they were now, their only advice had been, “Just put some cream on it.”

When the pain had me sweating and I begged to see a doctor, all I got was a cold rebuke: “Stop being so dramatic.”

But now, for my brother, whose illness had no name, they were willing to upend an entirely unfamiliar city.

Suddenly, it all felt so pointless.

The itching I hid under my collar, the nights I scratched until I bled—none of it, it turned out, could ever outweigh a single, soft-spoken “I don’t feel good” from my brother.

The moment I hung up, I pulled the study abroad application from my pocket.

The tip of my pen hovered over the signature line for a moment, then I finally signed my name.

§02

Just last night, my brother, Toby, had been sending me screenshots on iMessage, bragging about the dazzling new skin he’d bought for his video game.

The next morning, my grandfather’s trembling voice was on the phone.

“This thing with your brother… it’s spooky. The big hospitals in town can’t find a thing. Your mom’s driving him up to you right now, overnight.”

My knuckles were white as I gripped the phone.

He was faking it.

I knew it better than anyone.

For a long time now, he’d been finding creative ways to skip school, locking himself in his room to play video games under the guise of “burnout.”

My parents never called him out on it.

Instead, they would anxiously shuttle him to the hospital every single time.

Even when the tests came back clean, a single frown and a muttered “I don’t feel well” from him was enough to send the entire family into a tailspin.

The entire family, of course, except for me.

The ink on the application was still wet when my phone buzzed again.

Dad, Mom, Grandma—the calls came one after another, a relay race of anxiety, each voice more strained than the last.

The stack of his medical reports from our hometown was thicker than a dictionary, yet not one could pinpoint what was wrong with Toby.

“You know your way around the city,” my mother’s voice came through the phone, heavy with a fatigue she couldn't hide.

“Can you take a day off tomorrow?”

“Okay,” I agreed.

Deep down, I didn’t want to go.

But my mother… she was the only one in this family who had ever offered me a shred of warmth, even if it was as scarce as starlight on a winter night.

When the rash first appeared, she was the only person I told.

She sent me five hundred dollars and told me to see a specialist.

I hadn’t even left my dorm room when my dad’s text popped up: “Send that money back. Do you have any idea how hard your mother works? You dare ask for five hundred dollars for a little rash? Can you stop being so dramatic for once? Don’t you know how much pressure we’re under with the mortgage and the car payments?”

I quietly transferred the money back.

And so I waited.

And waited.

Until the rash festered into open sores.

“Your brother…” she sighed.

“You’ll see when you get here. When it hits him, it’s terrifying. He clutches his chest, says he can’t breathe…”

My mother was still rambling, but I had stopped listening.

Can’t breathe?

When I was seventeen, bullied by classmates and falsely accused by a teacher, I was confronting them in the principal’s office when my vision suddenly went black.

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