Chapter 3
No matter how hard he tried, Rainier could not come to terms with what he had witnessed in a forgotten room in an unnamed hospital that he couldn't quite pin a name to. Though he had long ago forgotten the smaller details, like the hospital's name, the room number, and even what he had been wearing, he remembered four distinct visions.
One.
His younger sister, only six at the time, stumbled down the large estate's grand marble staircase on a cold autumn night. He remembered turning around, horror struck, to hear the delicate cracking of his sister's bones as she tumbled all the way to the bottom. He could still see her crumpled form, sitting crookedly half on the last step, half on the polished floor. Father's loud booming voice bellowing from his study. Mother's heels clacking towards the scene. And there stood Rainier, helpless, at the bottom of the stairs looking horrified at his sister's body.
Two.
He could barely understand what his father was trying to tell him. They were in his sister's hospital room, Rainier sitting uncomfortably in the too big, hard-backed, adult chair as his father gripped his shoulder with a thick hand. The words were something about his sister, but he could not understand what his father's intentions were.
"Look, son... Your sister's spine is broken. She can't even breathe without these damned tubes in her! Son, I can't leave her like this. I need you to take the blame for what I'm about to do, but know in here," his father's large hand slipped from his shoulder to his chest, "that what you will do for me is right for your sister."
Rainier stared curiously at his father. The tears he had never seen his father shed before, and will never see again, slipped soundlessly down the man's unshaven cheek.
Three.
His father made sure his mother had gone to get him a steaming cup of coal-black coffee when he lifted his son up on the bedside next to his comatose sister. He watched his father's hands lift away from his sides and slip shamefully down to the electrical socket at the right of his chair. He watched the big fingers clumsily fumble around the large gray plug occupying said electrical socket. With a short jerk of his hand, the plug left the wall.
The whirring of a single nameless machine sputtered and died, and with that he knew his sister was gone.
Four.
He was blamed.
"The darned kid was playing around with the side of the machines and accidentally stepped on the cord! He must have pulled it out with his foot!"
With the look of horror his mother had given him, he felt as though he was to blame for his sister's recent departure, yet he knew-
"But know in here."
That his father was a silent killer, ready to put his son on the line to spare himself prison.