Arian

They say time flies. How true the saying I’m only understanding now. As I stare into space I realise it seems like forever ago since Adrian and I danced through our mothers garden, her favourite place in the world, chirping and clapping like we had no worries. I remember our favourite ice cream place in our old neighbourhood. We didn't have it all back then but we were happy and content because that was when we saw our parents the most. When we were what mattered most to them in the world. Nostalgia grabbed me by the soul as memories of when Adrian and I had gained admission into our dream college surfaced, how happy and proud we were of ourselves, how proud we'd made our parents. Back then I used to think the joy we felt on that beautiful day would last us at least a quarter of our remaining lifetime, but I was wrong.

Time is relative. Einstein couldn’t be more right. It's funny how sometimes it's so fucking slow it fractionates your mind and only then do you realise how frail happiness truly is. My shoulders dropped in a scowl as memories I'd repressed all these years resurfaced. Out went good and in came the bad, and it flooded my mind in seconds like an airborne disease in the open. I shivered as my mind took me back to our first loss as a family. The death of my baby sister Hope, who was only a few months old, had caused my mother to slowly slip into depression, and dad was so busy making sure they didn’t lose the progress they’d made with the business he couldn’t take care of her. Which meant the responsibility of making sure mom was okay was left for us. We knew dad's absence wasn’t because he didn’t love mom, on the contrary, it showed how much he loved and knew mom. He knew that she would hate herself more if their efforts to grow Lily's Grace were ruined because of her. So, we had to step up, mom needed us. That was when I realised I had a responsibility as the firstborn and I had to be more and act more grown-up than age nine. It was hard, harder than I thought but I pulled through and I became the pillar my family needed at that time. And when mom finally recovered, my heart knew all of my struggles and tears; did a lot of crying in secret, were not in vain. When our parents died a couple of years ago, I had to step up again but this time to be the father and mother Adrian needed. There was nobody to protect him, only me.

I finally dared to look down at the bed in the room, and as much as I tried to stop my stream-like tears, I couldn't, dreading this sight more than I have ever dreaded anything my whole life. Adrian laid there lifeless, tubes sticking out different parts of his body. He looked pale and dead, and my heart ached. My eyes examined his ghoulishly looking frame, finally stopping at the visible anchor tattoo on his upper right hand. Instinctively, I looked at my right shoulder even though I couldn’t see my arm because of my coat, my left hand rubbing the part of my body where my own tattoo was.

Another memory resurfaced. Our blood Oath. “Even in death, I am your Anchor.”

“What happened to you?” I whispered, crying.

"When we first received him, he looked like he wouldn't make it. The accident was a serious one but somehow he managed to stay alive during surgery," the doctor said in consolation, but somehow hearing that my brother came in almost dead: could have died, did the opposite of consoling me.

"He's a fighter. I think he has a reason to live. Have faith, I've seen people recover from worse." he nudged my shoulder then made his rounds to other patients.

A few hours later and I was all caught up on the state my brother was in. He was more stable than he looked. That itself was a big relief, the problem was his kidneys had been damaged as well as his heart. He needed a new kidney; that's where I come in, and he was on the waitlist for a new heart, but the operation can only happen if he responds to treatment. For now he was to be kept under strict observation. I wished I could do something, anything to speed up this process, but unfortunately waiting was my only option. And time was so fucking slow passing by, everyday was almost unbearable to live.

"There's nothing anybody can do now Mr Gregory. We have to wait, once his vitals improve and he's stable enough for surgery, we will proceed with the transplant. The only thing you can do now is get tested so we're sure you're a matc."

There was no way I wasn't a match, we fucking share the same everything, but I wasn't going to tell the doctor that.

November had come with elation and fucking miracles although the month didn’t start like it would. My uncles have been breathing down my neck every fucking day the first quarter of the month to fix the financial crisis my brother's video had caused. And as much as I also wanted to, I couldn’t. My head was a mess. Adrian being in the hospital and my inability to keep my fear that something could go wrong at any minute at bay was beginning to take its toll on me. I couldn’t function as a person, let alone the CEO of a company. Their concerns were justified, that I admit, but there was no need to badger me the way they did. They never missed a day to make my life miserable and this morning was no different.

My fathers oldest brother mouthed so many expletives the moment he walked in, I was sure he was possessed, raging on about how I'd disgraced the Gregory name with my perversions that I had failed to escond.

"Over the years you'd committed distasteful acts and we'd turned a blind eye because we understood they were youthful exuberances, but if we had known you'd be so shameless as to do this and get caught in the act..." he ranted on about all of my brothers' past misdeeds that I had taken the fall for, and though it pissed me off to hear him speak that way, I did nothing but listen because I'd rather that than let myself be cornered to a point where I mistakenly tell them Adrian had been the perpetrator behind every single act I was being accused of. Only a handful of people knew this; my lawyer, my secretary and the head of PR, it was safe to say the number of people were more than enough.

"You're still sitting on this chair because your mother was a good woman and we could not do something as despicable as removing you from the company, if this was someone else then I'd have had them removed and thrown out on the streets."

My uncle cleared his throat as my impassive look turned to one of rage. He knew he'd crossed the line. Being subversive was one thing and telling me to my face that he had some kind of right on this company that belonged to my parents was borderline provocative. Him standing here was the definition of the word serendipity.

Lily’s Grace had been willed to my mother by my maternal grandparents when they passed, leaving nothing but a bed and breakfast with freakishly huge debts to my mothers' name. Lily met my father only after she'd struggled alone to clear all of its debts and transformed it into something worth investing In. My father had come into her life for that reason and from business partners, they became something more. Originally my mother had more shares but she gave them as gifts to Adrian and I on our eighteenth birthday. Dad on the other hand had left his shares unwilled before he passed, and my greedy uncles saw their chance to feed their greed. We lost the case to my uncles who insisted the court share my fathers' property amongst all of his family members as per the law. They also plotted a coup but thankfully they weren't able to take over the company as I had the majority of shares after joining Adrian's and mine. Adrian offered his shares at the last minute in exchange that I funded his lifestyle outside the company. He didn’t want anything to do with the company or our uncles, wanting nothing but to live his life in the shadows and at that time I thought it was a good idea. I thought I was protecting my brother from the homophobic barbarians in our family, but seeing him on that bed all lifeless, not sure if he'd come back to me made me doubt my choices and panged me with guilt.

I was about schooling my uncles on the history of the company when my phone rang and I heard the best news of my life.