A Steemit Original - A Lifetime of Seeking Happiness - Chapter 3 - Part 5

 Memoir of a runaway girl - A true story!

To my surprise, my first reaction was to slap her across the face to snap her out of it, but it had no effect. My sister and I managed to walk her into the living room and we helped her to sit down. Her eyes were glazed over and she had a blank look on her face as she stared off into the distance.  

Karen called our cousin who was a registered nurse and explained how Mom was non responsive to anything we were doing. “Should we call an ambulance?” Karen asked. 

 

My cousin diagnosed her condition being probably due to diabetic shock. She told us that we needed to get sugar into her. So we got a chocolate bar and broke it into small pieces and we forced them into her mouth. We even tried giving her some orange juice, but it would just dribble out of her mouth.  Luckily the chocolate began melting in her mouth and she was slowly absorbing sugar from it. It took us about twenty minutes before she finally started to come around.    

Karen asked Mom if she recalled me slapping her, she just said “No, not my Abby, she would never hit her mother”. 

Karen and I looked at each other and we were relieved that she did not remember it.    

This was typical of the way Mom handled things when they went wrong. She would never speak up or get involved when Dad was on a rampage. Instead she would either hide us away from him or would do something that would distract everyone from the problem, even if it only worked for a couple minutes. She tried to hide my brother away but we all knew that inevitably my father was going to find out. You can’t hide an injury that is going to take a couple months to heal without my Dad finding out.  

For the next three years, I stayed at home with our son until he was about five. Remo continued working at the same restaurant. One thing you could say about Remo, he had good stamina, and he worked hard long hours, but we still had a problem in our marriage. 

   

Remo would go away for weekends at his buddies cottage with all his single buddies. This always upset me. He was married and a lot of these guys were on the prowl. There were times he would come back and he would have this smell about him. I knew what it was, but I ignored it for the longest time. 

With all the problems in my marriage I was becoming lonely for adult companionship and this was when my brother came into the picture.    

My brother was kicked out of my parent house and he called me and asked, “Abby, I need a place to stay, can I stay with you guys until I get on my feet?”  

This was asking a lot, but Remo agreed, but I made some rules.    

I told him, “Ok Jim, you can stay with us for a little while. But you can not drink or bring any kind of drugs into my home. I mean it Jim, the first time I see you get drunk or high you will be out the door. Are you ok with these rules?” 

 

Jim agreed and within two days he had moved in. Since we did not have an extra room for him, he slept on the couch in the living room.  

About a week later, I was doing the laundry. I was checking the jean pockets to make sure they were empty. In Jim’s jeans pocket I found a bag filled with miscellaneous pills. This totally enraged me. How dare he do this? He had already been warned about this!    

I confronted him, holding the bag in front of me and said, “What is this Jim? What did I tell you, I said no drugs in my home, do you even care about your nephew?”  

He was dumb founded and left speechless.    

This was when I made a grave mistake. I took the pills, went into the bathroom, locked the door behind me and then flushed them all down the toilet. I knew this was going to not end well but I had to show him that rules were here for a reason. What if my son had found them and taken them?  

Well my brother flew into a crazed panic. 

He knew what I was doing and he pounded frantically on the door. 

As I came out, WHAM, I was on the floor.

    

Jim was on top of me and he was wailing on me as hard as he could, with a closed fist. I tried to desperately to stop him but he was too strong. Eventually he got off me and I ran into the kitchen and grabbed the largest knife I could find.    

He came towards me, and I pointed it towards him. I told him if he came near me, I would kill him. He did not even look like my brother anymore, his eyes were glazed over and he looked psychotic.  Jim slowly approached, and he stopped close enough to rest his stomach against the tip of the knife.    

“Do it Abby, go ahead, kill me, my life sucks anyway, you would be doing me a favor” he said. He had the strangest look on his face.

Seeing my brother in many different situations, knowing how he was, this actually confused me. This wasn’t the brother I remembered.  No matter how much I hated him at that moment, I knew he was still my brother.    I was crying and shaking like a leaf. I was bleeding from my nose and lip and felt pain over much of my body. That was when he turned away from me and went out on the balcony. I ran over and locked the door behind him to trap him. 

I then called the police and I told them that I had him trapped on my eleventh floor balcony.   

 

For a big city, the police came in stellar time. They proceeded to go the balcony, Jim was gone, but how, and where could he possibly have gone?    

My first reaction was to look down into the parking lot, I thought I would see his body laying down there, a huge sigh of relief came over me when I did not see him on the pavement.    

The police inside called an ambulance to come and check me over since I was refusing to go the hospital. I was beaten pretty badly. My eye was already turning black and my nose and lip were swollen and covered in dried blood. 

Chapter 3 - Part 6 continues tomorrow. 

I would also like to apologize for not posting yesterday, been quite under the weather and just couldn't sit in front of the computer. Thank you for your patience.

For those who missed the beginning, you can read it here: https://steemit.com/writing/@feline1991/a-steemit-original-a-lifetime-of-seeking-happiness-part-1