text: How can she do this to me? I don’t want to be alone again. I’ve spent my whole life trying to find a partner, not just the romantic kind, but my chosen partner always left me. For the longest time I did not want children in my life. The thought of being tied down and woken up early filled me with dread. Over time those reservations melted away and the idea of pouring my love into a small creation of my own became insatiable, but like most things in life I left it too late: the biological bus had left the station before I found someone I was willing to share it with. In the end they left too, although it was a small Volkswagen car that they left in, taking the remnants of my youth and my best bedding with them, or did they take the towels? I guess it doesn’t matter now. My sister is looking at me from across the room, giving me one of those ‘I’m trying to read your mind looks’. When we were young we were never that close, I was the tomboy who gravitated towards Dad and went to football games, she was the perfect lady, accompanying Mum on her shopping trips and ladies lunches. When it was just the two of us we never really knew what to say to each other. I suppose I envied her in a way, getting to spend all that time with Mum, before the illness took her from us. ‘Are you alright, Susie?’ I turn towards my little sister and nod. She looks different. She looks older. I still think of her as the little girl, who would run screaming when I dug up worms for fishing trips and threw them at her. Our Dad used to take me out on this little boat, that was bright blue, or maybe it was yellow? No it was red and it was called...oh I can’t remember. Anyway we would spend the day fishing together and he would tell me everything. On the last trip he told me he wouldn’t be around as much because he’d found someone who made him happy. Well she can’t have made him happy for long because he left her too and then we never saw him again. My Mum burned all the photos we had of him and I can’t remember what he looked like now, although I’m starting to get that way with most people these days: just last week I invited the Amazon delivery man in for a coffee thinking he was my old maths teacher. When I close my eyes and think really hard, I can almost bring my Dad’s face into view, but his eye colour begins to blur like a kaleidoscope and his features shift and bend like cloud patterns. ‘Do you want me to get you some water? They will be here soon.’ My sister is speaking again, she’s good at that. Even though she was the baby, she bossed me around, and once it was just the two of us she stepped into the roll of Mum. I guess I played the part of Dad quite well, I often just disappeared too. I knew how much she would worry and how furious she would be with me when I did return. I don’t know why I did that really, because when I break it all down to the bare essentials she is the only person who has ever stood by my side from day one. Why did I feel the need to punish her for tethering her cart to me? Probably because I never deserved her love. I never managed to find it anywhere else. So why did she offer it up to me to willingly? Oh bloody hell I’m crying now. ‘Oh Susie, please don’t cry. It’s going to be alright you know, you’ll see. She’s walked over to me and I can feel her fingers raising my glasses off my nose and dabbing the corner of a tissue into my eyes. Her warm hand brushes through my ever thinning hair and rests on my neck. I try and bring my hand to meet her, but wince in pain when I try and move the arm that is strapped to my chest in a brace. Funny, I don’t remember it being like that? My other arm moves much better and I wrap my fingers around hers. She is staring at me, that same worried stare that she has given me my entire life: when she found me sleeping on a park bench after Dad left, when she picked me up from the airport after my love affair with the French..no Spanish waiter fell apart, when she appeared beside my hospital bed after I had slipped on the ice and broken my arm. She put her life on hold for me, she didn’t go to college because she needed to pay the bills. She put me before her husband and he left her childless and alone again. I can’t remember when she came to stay with me, I probably insisted that she leave and that I was alright. Truth be told I’ve never been alright. I have always found people who I wanted to be my rock, that I could hang on to and be safe, but they all crumbled away to dust in my hands, all of them except her. From across the room there’s a knock on the door. I wonder if it’s Mr Jackson, it must be about time for my maths lesson. I need to tell my sister how I feel, before it’s too late. From now on I don’t want to be apart from her, I’ve taken her for granted and it’s my time to repay her. She gives my hand a squeeze and a tired smile appears across her face. She dabs the tissue to her eyes and then shuffles across the room to the front door. Two women dressed in white enter. They all turn to look at me and then begin whispering to each other. I try to get to my feet but my legs won’t seem to move? ‘Hi Susie, you’re going to come with us to your new home,’ said the shorter of the two nurses with the uneven fringe. They all have the same pitying smiles on their faces and now the two women in white are grabbing me with their firm hands and raising me to my feet. I turn to my sister and try to speak, I want to tell her how sorry I am for dragging her down, I want to tell her that everything will be alright from now on, I want to tell her I love her, but the words won’t join up properly and the only sound that escapes my mouth is a whining groan. ‘They will look after you now Susie. I tried, my God how I tried, but I can’t do it any more. You took the best of me. I’m sorry, Sister, but I need a few years on my own before it’s all over for me.’ My eyes start leaking again and the larger of the two women presses a tissue into my face. There is a dull ache in my chest and a lifetime of missed chances spin through my mind, I want to stop each one and remove it but they can’t be expunged at this point. I now know that this is completely of my own making, created by a lifetime of small betrayals, each one cutting and slicing at my sister, finally causing her to lose enough blood and kill our relationship entirely. I offer her one final smile and look at her for what I know will be the final time.