Their father was never around. It was a sad fact, but a true one. Sometimes that was okay, but other times the siblings missed him.
It was hard for Dib when he lost his first tooth, not having Dad there to caress him after he had it knocked out by Gaz. For the most part, he rocked back and forth on his bed in the fetal position until Gaz came in with butter pecan frozen yogurt and a pensive look on her face. She gruffly shoved the bowl of frozen dairy at Dib and snarled, "Sorry for punchin' you in th' face."
All Dib could do was stare. Never before, in the four short years he had interacted with her, had Gaz ever apologised for anything. She was always stubborn and pig-headed no matter what the topic, whether it came to what meal to eat that morning or who got to use the bathroom the longest, she would win hands-down. And face-down. And butt-down as well. She was violent and whatever she says, goes. Also, she thought apologising was for wimps with no guts.
Yet, here she was, offering her apology—the only one Dib was to get in his entire lifetime—and Dib wasn't sure what to do. Should he accept at the risk of being hit again, or reject and definitely get hit. Decisions, decisions...
In the end, Dib's better nature won and he murmured, in a lisping sort of way, "I forgive you." Then he ate his fro-yo and snuggled up against her, the thought of the Tooth Fairy far from his mind. And for once, Gaz didn't hit him for touching her.
Another time that was bad for Professor Membrane not to be around was the day Gaz started her monthly cycle. She had just turned the ripe-old-age of fourteen not three weeks ago when she began to bleed. Dib found her in the bathroom, door closed and fan on to cover the sound of sobbing. She was hysterical, what was she to do?
So Dib, against his better judgement, did some swift research. As soon as he finished, he knocked on the bathroom door. "Gaz, may I come in?"
"Go away Dib!" Gaz's muffled voice emanated from the bathroom, choked with tears and snot. "Leave me alone!"
"No," Dib asserted, "I will not leave you alone." He had to help her because she was in pain and, whether or not she hated him and regardless of how often she hurt him, he was her older brother. That had to count for something, right?
"Go away before I make you go away!" She wiped her eyes, growling at her stubborn brother. Did he not notice her crying?! She was not in the mood to bother with his big-headed stupidity at the moment.
Dib was proving that he could be as stubborn as Gaz at the moment, his arms crossed firmly as he knocked on the door again and again. He was inot/i budging on this one. Not one bit. Mom wasn't around anymore to help her, and there was no way Dad was going to stop work to explain to his hysterical daughter what the bleeding meant. Dib was the only one available to comfort her and he'd be damned if he didn't do it to the best of his ability.
"Gaz! I know it's hard and you don't want me to come in, but I've seen you naked since we were little so tough kumquats! I'm coming in, I'm helping you, and there'll be ino/i stopping me." Dib opened the door, fully expecting to get his nose broken and yet...nothing. Gaz was crouching on the tile floor, her knees pulled to her chest, a pair of blood-stained underpants on the floor next to her. Now, although what Dib said was true, it had been quite some time since he and Gaz had been naked in the same room together, so the image he had of her body was very under-developed.
His sister had grown into a beautiful woman, and was going to continue growing and blossoming and maybe he would never see her like this again, all vulnerable. It filled him with a sense of pride and sorrow, that their intimate moments occurred whenever one of them was under emotional duress, and that they had any intimate moments together at all. He reached out and embraced her in a deep hug; all the knowledge he had accrued was worthless, the only thing he could do now was just hold her.
He rocked her back and forth as he rubbed her back, making small soothing noises. "Shh, shh, shh...It'll be okay..."
"They cal-called me a bitch!" Gaz hiccupped, "and no-normally I would-wouldn't care but it hurt!" The hormones running amok through her system were playing games with her, making her more sensitive than normal, and she hated it. He hated it too.
He hated seeing her like this, in such a state that even she couldn't be apathetic like normally. He hated the girls who made her cry and hated her body for making her so unstable at the moment. He pulled her head away from his shoulder and stared in her eyes, smiling kindly. "You are not a bitch. You are wonderful and smart and beautiful and better than any of those other girls. You remember that."
"But they're so—"
"No," Dib interrupted, "They are not. Now," he stood up and helped her up as well, "Let's go to the store and buy some feminine products and Midol for you, okay?" She nodded and she ran to her room to get new clothes on.
Maybe sometimes Dib wasn't such a weirdo...maybe it was nice having him around.
The one moment that concreted the distance between them and their father, and the two of them with each other, was violent and terrible. Something they wished would never have happened in the first place. Dib was in the hospital.
Gaz had spent the last three days watching her brother breathe in and out with assistance, IVs stuck in his arms and a tube down his throat. He was bandaged and bruised, skin pocked with scars the colour of bologna and a peaceful look on his face. Why? Why him?
Now he was a statistic, a number in a chart on a graph. To the world, he was one in four, something to be observed. She had to fend off reporters day in and day out, nearly punching one of them in the testicles. Maturity had affected even her, mellowing her out as time passed, while never ridding her of that fiery temper and pigheaded-ness that made Gaz her. That, however, did not stop her from breaking several pieces of hospital furniture in a blind rage when they told her he might not ever wake up./p
Dib, her brother, the only family member she had that cared anymore, was asleep and might never wake up.
God, please, I know I don't talk to you as often as I should—especially since Mom died—but...please let him be okay...he's all I've got...Amen
Religion, one thing she got that Dib didn't. While she floated in the realm called Christianity, he was agnostic to the core. "If there's proof," he had said once, "Then I'll believe. Until then, maybe God exists, maybe not." Please don't let him die. Please, Dib, don't die...I love you.
She never said it often enough, "I love you." Always skirting around the three-word-phrase as if it were lava, never allowing herself to show how she truly felt. It was stupid, the shell she built up to protect herself. Really, all she did was prevent her brother from knowing how much she needed him. He was all she had.
Dib's heart monitor beeped loudly, the only sound in the barren room—they had taken all the non-medical furniture out of the room after she tossed the metal chair through the window. Then, Dib gasped.
"Gffss?" He mumbled around the tube, his jaw clenching weakly as he tried to enunciate the hard consonants. "Wff mm mhh nnnhg hrr?"
She handed him a pad of paper and a pencil that he took up on his right hand and watched as he shakily wrote, "Why am I here Gaz?"
"You were...those guys...raped you..." She couldn't bring herself to tell him how his lung was punctured when they stabbed him in the chest, or how he only had one kidney. It was too much for the moment.
"Oh...they did? So...how long?"
"Long enough. About a week, really. They only let me come in for the last three days. You were pretty beat-up..."
"So...how bad is it?" Dibs handwriting had always been neat and small, slanted cursive-esque vowels and bold consonants decking whatever he wrote, but now it was sloppy and childish. It made Gaz sad seeing his script degenerate like it did.
"I love you," she blurted out.
Dib's prone form stiffened for a minute and then he scribbled down, "That bad?" Gaz nodded and Dib tried to smile, a crooked facsimile of his trademark grin. "I love you too, little sister." She hugged him and fell asleep with her head in his lap a few minutes later.
Sure, their family was broken, but they had each other and sometimes that's all that mattered.