Always Watching

The police brought his body out of the tank and Steve Phillips took him to the vet. Do you want him cremated?”
    Steve had seen all the police cars going to my brother’s place and followed behind. I’d only spoken to him for seconds before climbing into the back of the ambulance, but he’d promised to look after Brew.
    Robbie nodded and looked away, fiddling with the bandage on his chest. His voice thick, he said, “Can I have some water?”
    I handed him his cup, helping him with the straw. When he was done, I set the cup back on the side table and sat down in the chair. Trying to pull myself together from the upset of seeing my brother with tubes coming out of him, I took a moment to unwind the scarf from around my neck, then stuffed it in my pocket.
    Speaking low, almost in a mumble, Robbie said, “You did that in the ambulance.”
    Thinking he might be groggy from pain medication, I said, “Did what?”
    “Took off your scarf and shoved it in your pocket.”
    I narrowed my eyes, tried to remember what he was talking about—the trip in the ambulance still a blur. The only time I remembered taking off my scarf was after he’d flatlined and they were giving him chest compressions. The stress and heat in the ambulance had made me feel like I was strangling.
    “You were unconscious.…”
    “It was more than that.” His voice was impatient. “You know I wouldn’t make this shit up. I saw you—like I was above you. You took the scarf off so fast you ripped your earring out. It’s under that stretcher I was on.”
    Now I remembered the pinging sound, so focused on Robbie that I’d ignored it. I sat back in the chair, stunned into silence. How did he know that?
    He said, “I don’t want to talk about this much—it scared the crap out of me, okay? And don’t go telling a bunch of people. They’ll think I’m nuts.”
    Still trying to process what he’d just told me, I said, “Okay…”
    “It was kind of like what Aaron described. I was outside, I could see you, and hear your thoughts. You were really scared—I tried to talk to you, but I couldn’t. I felt calm, though, and really peaceful.”
    He had to have been hallucinating. I was about to explain that it was probably a neurological response to the lack of oxygen, then stopped when I realized that most hallucinations produced from an oxygen-starved brain would cause confusion or disorientation, not a calm, peaceful image. And I couldn’t explain how he knew my earring had fallen off. Even if he’d still had auditory response, there was no way he could’ve seen me remove my scarf.
    Robbie stared back up at the ceiling, blinking hard. “Something happened to me in that ambulance. I don’t know what it was, or why it happened.” He met my eyes. “But I’m not afraid to die anymore.”
    I thought of Paul, thought of my mother and father, about my own fears of death. Then I realized I’d climbed down into that septic tank without a moment’s hesitation. Being forced to conquer my fear in the barn had set me free.
    I was overwhelmed by emotions and thoughts I wanted to take out and look at when I was alone. “Well, you’re not dying on my watch.”
    He smiled, but then his face turned serious, the lines pulling deep around his mouth. “I should’ve protected you better when we were kids.”
    “You did protect me—the best you could. You were only sixteen. Your job wasn’t to look after me. Our parents should’ve protected both of us.”
    Anger washed across his face. “You’re always blaming them for everything that happened when we were kids. They tried their best.”
    I wasn’t surprised at the disconnection between my memories and his. I’d seen it many times in therapy, two siblings having a completely different opinion of their childhood. It was classic in a dysfunctional family, where the abuse was never discussed and the abuser always defended. But it made me sad. That the silence, and all things we don’t talk about, still separated us.
    I said, “I loved them too—but they had a lot of problems.”
    “You don’t even know what it was like. You were never around.”
    And there it was: the resentment. I’d moved away, and he’d stayed.
    I tried to calm down, fighting my urge to defend myself for breaking the cardinal rule of our family—unhappy or not, never talk about what was really going on. My trying to seek personal happiness, to rise out of the tears and black eyes, the screaming and crying, was the