23. CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 23

Atlas: Eighteen Years Old

Four hours later, I had finally found Kaleb. He was slumped down in an old and busted lawn chair. The living room was trashed with leftover food wrappers, miscellaneous boxes of garbage, and syringes. He wasn’t the only body in the room, but he was the only one I was concerned with. This was the third Den I had visited today in my search for him, and here he was, out of his mind, in the filthiest place he could possibly be.

His life had been on a rapid decline since he got his first taste of the high life, and now that we were eighteen, it was spiraling out of control. My parents can’t afford to send him off to a rehab facility, and all of our interventions have fallen on deaf ears.

Kaleb was my best friend; we did everything together. But now? Now, I spend most of my days searching for him while he chases his next high instead of his next lay. I missed those days, the days when we would fight over a pretty face instead of the lack of seeing his .

“Kaleb. Get the fuck up.” I smacked him across the face, attempting to wake him from his delirious state. He was so frail now compared to me. We were twins, but at this point, you could barely tell with how sick he always looked. He didn’t even care to wear nice clothes anymore. It pained me to see him in this state and his rapid decline of humanity. I couldn’t even begin to imagine what I would do if he died from the drugs he favored so much.

I blew out a sigh as I lifted him by his arm, draping it over my shoulder and practically dragging him out of the Den. I needed to get him home. Mom and Dad started to worry when he didn’t come home before one in the morning this time around. It was five now, the dawn breaking on the horizon. I didn’t get any sleep last night; he was more important to me, even if I wasn’t to him anymore.

“You need to get your shit together… I can’t keep doing this for you anymore. I’m not your fucking babysitter.” I mumbled my words more for me than for him. He couldn’t hear me in his drug-induced state. I opened the rear passenger door and laid him on the back seat when we got to my car. Once he was entirely inside the car, I shut the door and drove us home.

I glanced into the rearview mirror as I pulled away from the curb, and I couldn’t help but notice just how tired my eyes were looking these days. The dark purple that hollowed out my under-eye area. No wonder I can never pick up a woman anymore. I’ve been so busy caring for Kaleb that I’ve stopped caring for myself. I guess that’s the kind of man I am when it comes to the ones I love. I will do anything for them if it means keeping them safe.

One Month Later.

“Atlas, have you seen this article?” Kaleb strode into the kitchen of our family home and placed a printed article from a reputable medical journal on the counter. I picked it up and briefly glimpsed at the title.

“Relessen, free yourself from the vice that controls you.” I read the title of the article aloud and raised a brow, my gaze meeting his over the paper. During the past month, Kaleb had been struggling to resist the temptation to visit one of the dens he had been frequenting over the past year. One of our close friends died two weeks ago from a drug overdose, and I dragged his sorry ass to their funeral to give him a wake-up call. It worked, for the most part. He hasn’t been to a Den since, but I can hear him stirring at night in his room.

I refocused on the article and continued reading. After finishing it, I placed the sheet back down on the counter and rubbed my brow with my thumb.

“Well?” He asked, gesturing to the piece of paper.

“Well, what?” I sighed, crossing my arms.

“What do you think? Should I apply?” Kaleb bit his cheek and scratched the back of his neck. He was coming to me for advice, which he didn’t normally do anymore. I wanted to help him; I had tried helping him, but a clinical trial on a drug that sounds too good to be true…

“I don’t know, this just sounds too… unrealistic. A drug that can ‘cure’ addiction? Do you really want to be a guinea pig for some Big Pharma company?” I shrugged my shoulders and picked up my mug of coffee that I had set down on the counter before he entered the room.

“I’ll only admit this once and never again. Mom and Dad can’t afford to send me to rehab, and I don’t want them to have to bury me anytime soon. They stated that all participants in the clinical trial would receive the medication for free as long as they signed a non-disclosure agreement and followed all trial requirements. What’s the harm in it?”

“The harm is the fact that you don’t even know what is in this drug. How does it even cure the addiction of the user? What happens if the trial kills you?”

“What happens if my addiction kills me, Atlas? What then? Wouldn’t you rather I took a chance to regain my life back instead of accepting defeat? Isn’t that what you’ve always told me to do? To fight? Well, here I am, I’m fighting.” He held his hands out; his breaths turned heavy as an adrenaline rush spiked through him.

I didn’t trust this trial and didn’t want him to do it, but if he wanted to fight…

He wasn’t wrong; this was his best and only option at this point, putting his faith in an unknown, untested pharmaceutical drug.

I dropped my head back and blew out a breath, and when I returned my gaze to meet his, I gave him a soft smile.

“Alright, tell me what you need me to do,” I said. I would take the chance and do this for him. If this was his best shot, I would support him every step of the way.

“Registration starts today, so if you could drive me there, that would be great. They want a primary support person present.” He placed his hand on my shoulder and squeezed it. “Thanks, brother. I owe you one.”

“Just get better, Kaleb. That’s all I ask.” I sighed, pulling him into a brotherly hug. He returned the gesture and wrapped his arms around me, patting my back. We stood like that in the kitchen for a few more minutes before he broke our embrace, checking his phone.

“Shit, we gotta go. They close in two hours, and it’s a thirty-minute drive.”

I nodded, throwing back the last of my coffee, setting my mug down on the counter next to the medical journal, and following him out the door. I grabbed my keys to the car as we passed by the entryway table.

“Let’s go get your life back,” I said as I closed the door behind me, and we left for the clinical testing facility.

Six Months Later.

“Mr. Jensen?” the medical assistant called from the hallway, and Kaleb stood and stepped towards her. “Right this way, please.” She gestured him past her and down the hall.

It has been six months since I first brought him here, and I have to admit: Relessen is working. Kaleb has been free of all his cravings since he started taking the experimental drug, and life has finally started returning to normal. He even managed to meet a woman this past month, and from what it sounds like, he couldn’t be happier with his life right now.

I still believe that this solution is too good to be true, but for him to have not relapsed after six months is a win, and I will take that any day. I had my brother back, just like I had always wanted. We’ve been spending more time together recently and joined a local morning running group. He doesn’t look like the sickly drug addict that he once was, and now, we look more like the twins that we were before any of this ever happened. He was always more good-looking than me, and I am actually quite proud of that fact.

Today, at the testing facility, they are going to perform a full physical on him to determine if he is ready to taper back even further off the drug. Right now, he is taking it once a week, and back when he started, it was every day.

After what felt like an hour, Kaleb reentered the lobby from the back hall, and I stood from my chair.

“All good news, I hope?” I asked as he approached me.

“Better than that.” He chuckled and patted the back of my shoulder. “Let’s get home and tell Mom and Dad their son is cured.”

“They tapered you back even further?” My eyes widened as we stepped out of the building.

“Yeah, one pill every two weeks unless something happens.” He shrugged and licked his lower lip.

“Then I think we should celebrate tonight. Do you want to call your girl up, and we can all go out?” I rounded the car and opened the driver’s side door, sliding inside.

Kaleb got into the passenger side and closed the door as he settled into his seat.

“Sure, where do you wanna go?” He asked, pulling out his phone to call her.

“Anywhere, it’s up to you,” I replied, buckling my seatbelt and starting the car. “It’s your night tonight. You’ve officially gotten your life back.” I couldn’t help but beam as we discussed his test results on the drive home.

I finally had my brother back. Now, all I needed was a woman of my own, and life would be perfect.

One Year Later…

Beep… Beep… Beep…

That’s the only sound I hear anymore. The last week has been the constant sounds of machines beeping in my ears. Kaleb had been in and out of the hospital for months with inexplainable symptoms ranging from randomly passing out to seizures, and now… now he was in a drug-induced coma.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

His girlfriend, Emily, has been standing at his bedside the entire time we’ve been here. Holding his hand and talking to him as if his subconscious could hear her words. I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. I sat in the corner of his hospital room, bent forward, my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

What happened? How did we get here? I didn’t understand what was happening to him. One minute, he was fine, and the next… he was falling apart by the day. Two weeks ago, he could barely keep any food down. Any attempt at eating was followed immediately by throwing up the entire meal. And then, last week, he stopped eating and lost his appetite altogether.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

A few days ago, he had collapsed in the kitchen with another seizure, and I called for an ambulance immediately. When they got to our house, they were able to stop the seizure but said they needed to get him to the nearest hospital and place him in a medically induced coma for the time being until they could figure out what was wrong with him.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

I haven’t slept since we arrived at the hospital, waiting for him to be woken up and put back together. I shot up from my seat, fisting my hands, and punched the wall under the mounted TV. The plaster dented under the force, and Emily was startled by the sound. My knuckles had split, and there were streaks of blood where my fist had met the wall. I cursed as I stood there, staring at the damage I had done.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

That fucking beeping. I ran my hands through my hair, tugging hard at the strands as tears filled my eyes. Emily stepped away from Kaleb and touched my shoulder from behind. I was breathing heavily from the stress and eventually dropped my hands to my sides.

Beep… Beep… Beep…

“I’ll be fine, Emily… Go back to him.” I murmured, not moving, still facing the wall.

“Atlas, you need sleep.” She spoke softly .

“So do you, but you don’t see me telling you what to do.” I snapped.

“I’m not here to be your emotional punching bag, Atlas. I am hurting just as much as you are.” She raised her voice slightly.

“You have no idea how badly I am hurting. He is my brother. I’ve known him a hell of a lot longer than you. Don’t you dare fucking tell me that you understand just how much I am hurting.” I seethed, turning around and shrugging her hand off my shoulder.

“You—” Emily was cut off as a couple of the monitors in the room started beeping loudly and rapidly. We both turned to the bed where Kaleb was lying, and an entire medical staff of nurses and doctors filled the room.

They checked monitors, filled syringes with various liquids, and plunged them into his IV. Emily gasped, covering her mouth with her hands, and my mind spiraled. Everything was happening so fast that I was no longer hearing the sounds of the machines ringing in my ears. What happened to the beeping?

Mom and Dad ran into the room; they had just returned from grabbing lunch. I could hear my Mom crying, and she ran over to embrace Emily, who was screaming. My Dad came over to me and tried pulling me away from the bed so the doctors could continue their work to save Kaleb. I didn’t even notice that I had moved. I was standing at the foot of his bed, fisting the blankets that covered him.

It all happened so fast. One minute, Emily and I were arguing, and then next, I was being restrained against the wall by my Dad and a male nurse. I was raging inside as I watched the staff work on my brother. Minutes passed, and eventually, I was released and fell to the floor on my knees.

They were switching off his monitors, disconnecting his breathing tube… He was gone.

I overheard the muffled sounds of the doctor giving my parents their condolences.

“… we can confirm that Kaleb Jensen has passed due to multiple organ failure... This is a sudden and unexplainable death; we still haven’t been able to determine the cause for the organ failure… I am so very sorry for the loss of your son—”

Dad went to comfort Mom and Emily as I kneeled on the floor. My fists pounded into the floor, and tears ran freely from my eyes. At some point, I was pretty sure I had started screaming.

Hours had passed since Kaleb had been pronounced dead. My parents had to finish up the paperwork regarding his body before we could leave the hospital. Emily had left an hour ago, her parents came to take her home. She still hadn’t calmed down, and who could blame her? If it weren’t for the exhaustion that consumed me, I would still be in a frenzied state myself.

“I don’t understand; the doctor stated he died of multiple organ failure. Why does his paperwork state he died of a drug overdose?” I overheard my Dad speaking with the nurse who stopped in with documentation regarding Kaleb’s death.

“I’m sorry, sir, I don’t have an answer for you. You will need to speak with the Physician who called it.” She bowed her head and stepped out of the room. I stood from where I was sitting and took the packet from my Dad, reading over everything once, twice, three times.

He wasn’t wrong; the documentation stated that Kaleb’s reason for death was a drug overdose. It took me several minutes of staring at the words; drug overdose, drug overdose, drug overdose , before I realized what had happened and what this meant.

My brother was dead, and I was going to find the motherfucker that was responsible for his death if it was the last thing I ever did.