remained unconscious after surgery. Beside him, his sister Karen, tried to read a book of short stories by Patricia Highsmith, trying in vain not to think about why he was there, because after everything that had sworn to herself never to many times do something for his brother, had renounced all his vows and had gone to the hospital to join him in this predicament. For Karen hated his brother deeply. Since they were children this feeling, a mixture of anger, resentment and powerlessness, had marked their relationship, away for obvious. Apparently, he had inflicted during Karen brutal beating youth, who had finished with it in the hospital on two occasions. She, despite the passage of time, clearly remember the face of his brother chasing from side to side of the house like an animal hunting its prey. Bloodshot eyes crowning a cruel smile, a glance and a smile that showed openly the supreme joy, almost sexual, to see other suffer, to see how even though little or nothing was ever expected of him ( for his poor school performance), his hands were able to make you someone important, someone powerful, someone could destroy for the sake of destroying. This torture lasted for two long years, with the connivance and the complicity of the parents, despite the advice of his doctors were unable to report to his eldest son. So, Karen grew up dreaming of escaping from that hell, which one day could fall from those who had tortured and were tortured in the form of memories.
few years later, Karen and Joshua's parents died in a traffic accident. One night after dinner at a restaurant, the father, who was driving, tipsy with wine, ran a red light and his car ended up being run over by a police patrol that ran swiftly to the scene of a crime. All occupants died before emergency services arrived. The day Karen and Joshua's funeral is not embraced, each lived their pain is not transferable, as if they were enclosed in thick glass bells or a gulf separating them, or an iron curtain. This to thirty-five years since the brothers had not been called or had shown any interest for one another. At first, Joshua, who had ended up working in construction, journalist called his sister at Christmas, to invite her to eat, but always refused invitations Karen with some lame excuse, as if to show passive rejection, indirect, or the bottom of his heart, where he had repressed so much hatred and anger accumulated, refused to let go of all the single link, however fragile it might be, which united with their family roots.
Over the years a lot of therapy and Karen thought she had overcome all the traumatized during their childhood and youth. Sometimes I just needed to take some sleeping pills to rest. He had married and was divorced, had remarried, had no children, had found work in a newspaper, and through their painful experiences and sensitivity towards those weaker than them had given him, he ended up specializing in social issues: domestic violence, unemployment, disability, racism, sexual abuse, housing, etc. In all those areas in which a group was discriminated against or mistreated by society or the mechanisms of oppression she put words to denounce, from the power it gives the possibility to influence their readers, all those abuses. But it is said that one thing is to overcome trauma, forgive your executioner, and quite another to get forgotten.
A nurse entered the room of Joshua and looked at the bag drop by drop, in which there was still enough gluco-saline solution for several minutes.
"Hi. "He greeted the nurse. - Are you a relative of the patient?
"Yes, I am your hermana." said Karen.
"Look, I have to ask a favor. "I told the nurse a little nervous.
"Tell me. What I can help?
"I'm alone, including staff cuts and the wave of flu I am the only nurse for this shift. I have 45 patients to my office and do not give crude. Would you care to be attentive to drip in a few minutes to close the entrance to keep air from entering the body to his brother? When can I pass to change the saline bag and I will not trouble you more.
"Yes, of course. Do not worry. This crisis is wreaking havoc. I have reported many times in my articles as all these cuts in public health are aimed at privatizing services.
"It makes me a big favor, and of course his brother. Thank you very much ma'am. Bye.
-bye.
The nurse came hurried from the room and Karen returned to resume reading the last pages of the book. Patricia Highsmith had always seemed a brilliant writer, capable of creating a phrase of unease in the reader to hold after the suspense until the end, it used to be amazing. Violence and death were always present in his books, as they were also inevitably in life, creating an indivisible binomial such as life and death, in which all people, all human beings can at some point get carried away in the darkest, terrible and violent intentions. Nobody is safe from the possibility of falling into evil, no one can assert a never I will. Therein lies the mystery and appeal, where even the greatest hero alter ego is his nemesis and that any victim can eventually become an executioner.
When Karen finished reading, he lay on the couch. He looked at his brother who was unconscious and looked at the bag-a-dripping empty point, connected by a tube to the catheter that had been injected into the back of the hand of Joshua. Looking at the steady drip drip thought that was the same rate as a clock, plip, plip, plip, plip, plip, plip ... At any time that bag would end, a final plip, and the air was in the bag come in a bubble deadly blood flow to his brother, first slowly, up the arm to the heart where it may pumped to the brain. That would end the life of him who had tortured her many times and that at the time, and stayed, it seemed that he had never hurt a fly. It would be a full-scale revenge, served cold on a plate. Every time Karen had been shaken awake in the middle of the night after dreaming that he killed with his own hands Josua, seemed at the time subtle premonitions of that moment. Only she would not have to get their hands dirty. She had to do anything, she would not kill him, would the system. A social predator and murderer, where the weak have no place and no rights beyond those theoretical assumptions that looked at the Constitution and were trampled constantly dark ambitions. Just had to go back to lying on the couch, try to relax, or at least be asleep. Even taking the dream could force one or two sleeping pills. Nobody could ever accuse of having fallen asleep, it was two in the morning. Maybe before it was half past two, and his brother would be in another neighborhood, entering hell, if there really was a hell-head and through the front door. Perhaps then it would finally end his nightmares, and dream no more night that killed his brother. His brother would be dead, dead end, dead and buried. She, however, come home, expect your husband comes home from work, we propose to go to a restaurant, not a tear of pain, no space for repentance, would ask for a bottle of Cava or two or services required. Upon arriving home, I make love with tenderness and passion as often as were needed. Until he does not want more. Opened ended the life of Karen, the unhappy, the poor thing, the eternal victim, and would begin a new Karen, who would shape the years her remaining life ...
Karen leaned back in his chair, looked for his pillbox and took two pills. They did not take long to take effect. As if it had been disconnected from the machinery of life, suddenly fell into a deep sleep. The last image you created your imagination before all the lights went out of his consciousness, was that of a sunset on a white beach with the sun beating down on the horizon beyond the sea. It was just an instant, like a flash or a slide, before the night to swallow them all forever.
