Angela

Angela- Chaper three

The first brave rays of sunlight peep through Hazell's smashed window. Slicing across the floor and beginning what will be another chapter of my life. My arm is wrapped around my young sister, guarding her from the perils that will befall her one day as they do me. I make a mental note to protect her forever, no matter who or what stands in my way. I will make sure Hazell's is safe, even of it costs me my life to do so. She will not be harmed. I listen to her quiet breaths, watch the rise and fall of her chest, bask in the warmth that emanates from her body. She's warm, too warm. My eyes travel towards her face, her perfect white round face is flushed red. She's got a fever. Her beautiful green eyes are closed, her long, brown hair spread out in little tendrils on her pillow. If I don't cure her I might not ever see her eyes or her hair again. I gently shake her awake, her green eyes snap open, alert, then meet mine.
"What," She mutters sleepily, beginning to pick the grit off her face and out of her eyes. Her voice is gravelly but still belongs to her, little and squeaky like a twelve year old's voice should be. I allow myself to calm down a little, but then.
"Sis, I'm cold!"

It's true, she's shivering, I bundle her in her duvet and rush to collect mine too to put over the top. All the time she watches me, her big green eyes flecked with fear and illness. I force my voice down what must be three octaves in an attempt to sound reassuring.
"It's okay, Haze, you're gonna be okay," I kiss her softly on one cheek,
"Just wait there one sec, don't move a muscle,"
She mimes freezing and I laugh a light, happy laugh, one only Hazell can draw out of me. It takes every ounce of determination and my promise that I would protect her before I walk out of the room, there's a basic first aid kit under the stairs, I remember using it many a time to patch up my dad after one of his drunken rages. It's a small, blue pouch faded and torn from overuse. I remember it has fever pills, perhaps out of date, forgotten, lying at the bottom of the pouch for years. The handle to the cupboard under the stairs has mostly rusted away and I need to rattle it for what seems like an eternity before it swings open and I grab the pouch and race upstairs, fireworks banging in my head.

When I reach Hazell she's asleep again, her cheeks burning an ever brighter red. I shake her gently awake again and coax three fever pills into her, for good measure, I dampen a bandage and slap it over her forehead. Hazell shivers. It's only then do I remember about dad, for some reason he just pops into my head, I remember his groaning last night. It relieves me to hear the familiar thumping of dad coming up the stairs.
He stomps through the door, his bloodshot eyes blurred with drunken anger, he starts straight away ripping up the remainder of Hazell's tattered curtains and turning over a small yellow table in the corner of the room and in doing so bruising his knuckles. Then he really starts, he overturns Hazell's old chest of drawers and smashes the old, empty fish tank. I watch helplessly, never leaving Hazell's side, I couldn't bear it if dad started on her and she was all on her own, shaking with fear...
Silence.
Why has dad stopped? Nothing stops him in the middle of a drunken rage, he is lying on the floor in a ball the way I was before the Remembrance service. A rush of sympathy darts through me, what is my dad really, just me, unable to recover and so restored to a life of drugged depressing solitude reliving mum's death and waiting for his own? Is he just an older male version of me just with a worse way of dealing with his pain? If I were him and he was me, would he be treating me like a monster?
Dad is quaking, warding off the terrifying hallucinations that the alcohol has brought to him and I understand for the first time.