My brother is dying. He has always been dying. But he never dies. He simply hangs on, breathing in and out, never getting better and never getting worse.

            I remember when he was born. My father carried me into my mother’s hospital room, whispering in my ear. “Ernest,” he had said, “this is your little brother.”

            I saw the pale, wrinkled thing in my mother’s arms, and at the age of five I knew what death looked like. My three-year-old sister cried in a rocking chair, her face in her hands: she knew what death looked like, too.

            This event changed our lives. In our small, dark apartment we cared for my brother the best we could, hand-feeding him and cleaning him with wet rags. We never knew what was wrong with him. Doctors were puzzled by his illness that never ended.

            He lived, if you could call his existence living, in his deathbed, and in his life he has now had three deathbeds. First was his cradle, where we never thought he would leave, then, when he was older, a small bed with a bright, boyish-colored bedspread that he could not see because he was blind. Now, as an adult, he dies in a large bed with black sheets covering his frail body. He may as well lie in a coffin.

            For a while, I really pitied my younger brother. I had grown up in a home of sickness, and my greatest desire was to stop it, in my home and in others. I wanted to cure people. I watched doctor after doctor enter my home with no remedy, and I wanted to come home with a cure for my brother. But my dream was shattered when, halfway through medical school, I was diagnosed with chronic heart disease.  I was too weak to endure the stress of doctoring.

            They told me the sick could not help the sick, and I was forced to quit. As I underwent treatment, which was mainly rest, I picked up pen and paper and began to write. Out of my mind flowed a complete book on doctoring, all the things I could never do. I got it published, and I was able to sell enough copies to buy a decent home for my brother and parents, a house isolated on an island in the Pacific. I had learned that fresh air could help many people. It was worth a shot, anyway.

            This was where I was headed now, the Spring of my brother’s twenty-third year. My father had died of a heart-attack, and I was to come and check on my brother once-a-week until his last day, which appeared to draw near at times, and then quickly was snatched away again, leaving my brother in his eternal dying state.

            I squinted in the sun, my hand gently steering my small boat toward the island, where no one could see it from their shores. The trees loomed up bigger and bigger, until I drifted beneath them into a calm lagoon. I climbed out, drug the boat to the sandy shore, and grabbed a few bags of groceries before treading through the sand to the tropical paradise where my brother lay dying.

            Tall palm trees stretched above me, coconuts dangling like jewelry beneath their leaves. Around me, light poured down in hot segments, illuminating random plants like spotlights. I brushed my way through the tall plants, stepping down on them to get through. Anyone who visited the island out of curiosity would never have known that a house rested in the center. Even I had trouble finding it, it being only my second visit to the island, and no path having been worn through the underbrush.

            As the house came into view, I felt some pride in what I had done for my family. The stone sanctuary was a home anyone would be proud of. I was admiring the grand windows and green shutters and green doors, when a flutter of a different shade of green caught my eye.

            “Ernest!” A ripple of long golden hair flooded over me as my sister embraced me.

            “Eva! I did not know you were here!”

            Eva backed up, her smile leaving my own lips curving into a grin. She brushed back her wavy hair, adorned in various, colorful island flowers. Her eyes sparkled, the green matching her ankle-length dress.

            “I’ve been here a week,” she explained. “Oh, Ernest, it is so beautiful! I’m so glad you could give this for our brother!”

            “Something had to be done,” I said.

            “Yes. And what about you? Surely this place could help you, too.”

            “Yes…How is he?” I asked.

            Eva frowned. She took my hand and began walking toward the house.

            “No better, no worse,” she said.

            We walked up the ramp to the porch, passing a wooden sign, where “The Adamson Home” was carved. We stepped into the house, where light followed us through the windows. The sun beams danced in the living room, warming the floral cushions and soft, white carpet.

            Eva led me to the door to the right of the house. She looked at me, her eyes flickering worriedly across my face, and then she opened the door.

            There was no sunlight in the room. The curtains were drawn. Only the artificial glow of a ceiling lamp dimly lit the bed, the black sheets like a dark shadow in the room. Beside the bed was a strange, white machine with tubes and bottles of liquid sprouting from it. And in the center of the bed was my brother, the tubes branching from his arms, and two others holding a white cap over his mouth. His glassy grey eyes stared from his narrow face, which was as white as his short, snowy hair.

            Eva gripped my hand, leaning into my shoulder.

            “It’s still a shock,” she said. “Whenever I see him.”

            “What?” I asked, blankly. “Oh…yes.”

            I had been thinking just the opposite. Years of living alongside my brother had finally numbed me to the sight of death. I did not admit to Eva that I felt nothing for him at the moment. I slid the groceries to the floor and glanced at the drawn curtains that blocked off the sunlight.

            “Why are those drawn?” I asked. “I didn’t buy this place so he could die in the dark.”

            “He can’t see it.”

            The voice was not Eva’s. I turned, and I saw my mother sitting in the corner of the room, rocking back and forth in her chair.

            “Mother…”

            I could not say it was nice to see her. She frowned at me, her lips pinched, her grey eyes searching me.

            “He can’t see the light and he never will. You know that. And he will not see the blue sky or the green trees. And he will not breathe the fresh air. And he will not hear the ocean. My son is dying!”

            Eva fluttered to her mother’s side and knelt by her, petting her hand.

            I was about to shout in frustration, but my eyes caught sight of a mechanism beside my brother’s deathbed. A wheel chair, with another set of tubes connected to it, sat still, its clean, unmoved wheels meshing into the carpet.

            “Why hasn’t that been used? Has he been outside at all?”

            “I told you he would not know the difference!” my mother said.

            My chest ached, and I began coughing loudly. I pressed my hand against my mouth to stifle them as I sank into a cushioned-chair by the window. A few moments passed and Eva nudged me on the shoulder. I looked up, and she held out a glass of water.

            “Drink this,” she said sweetly.

            “I’m not thirsty,” I said, coughing again.

            “You look ill,” she insisted, bringing the water closer to my lips.

            I accepted just a sip, then shook my head to show I was finished.

            Eva stepped back. She took the glass to her dying brother and filled one of the bottles with the remaining liquid.

            I closed my eyes again, trying to block out the dark memories. But on the back of my eyelids I could still see my childhood-self pressing a glass of water to my ill brother, his lips unresponsive.

            “Drink! Drink!” I had cried. But my brother would not accept a drop.

            Now he had a machine to do it, a machine that kept my brother from death, but never from dying.

            “Why do we even bother keeping him alive?” I said, my eyes still closed. “What kind of life is that?”

            “Ernest…” Eva said. She was crying. “Ernest, I…I could not even live if I…if we…” She could not even repeat what my mind had thought. I opened my eyes and frowned at her apologetically.

            “Then let’s at least do something,” I said. “Something other than keep him trapped in this room!”

            Eva turned to her mother, expecting a shout of opposition, but the old woman had fallen asleep.

            “But what?” Eva whispered to me. “What can we do? All I want is to see him well.”

            I thought of the idea. My brother--well. What would that be like? Suddenly coming alive? How would he react to going from existing in a dying body to suddenly being well at the age of twenty-three? I could not be sure if that would be a relieving experience, like getting your braces off and finally being able to run your tongue over your clean, straight teeth, or a frightening experience, like waking up from a peaceful sleep and realizing you have a whole day of responsibilities ahead, and you just want to go back to your dreams.

            “Can’t you do something?” Eva said. “Can’t you do something you learned in medical school?”

            “The dying can’t keep other men from dying,” I said bitterly.

            “But you can make him well. You can make the remainder of his days worth living.”

            Tears streamed from her eyes. She turned to her dying brother and knelt by his bedside. She took his frail hand, her skin folding over his like sunlight passing over a shadow. Her lip trembled as she lowered her head onto the black sheet.

            I watched, but I could not join her. I had cried over my brother too many times. I had stayed by his side when no one else was able. But it was like being alone. I would never understand why my sister would sing to her brother who’s ears could not hear her sweet voice, or why she would cry over him as she did now. It was like mourning the death of someone you never knew.

            But as I watched her I felt different. I wanted my brother well as much as she did. I wanted to see my family together, finally able to live without death lingering in our home.

            I rose. I took hold of the wheelchair and pulled it from the deep dent it had made in the carpet. I rolled it back to my brother’s side.

            My sister looked up. “What are you doing?”

            I could only look at her imploringly, then I began disconnecting tubes and reattaching them, moving my brother’s life support from his bedside to the wheel chair. My sister watched silently, her eyes following my movements with understanding.

            As I lifted the black sheet from my brother, she stood and helped me lift his frail, exposed body, dressed in a simple, white gown, his arms and legs limp as we slid him from his bed to the chair. Eva situated him, helping support his head with a small pillow. By silent consent I wheeled the chair across the room, the living room, and out the front door. Sunlight greeted us. A soft breeze blew the palms so that their leaves seemed to wave at us--beckoning us. I paused at the doorstep, gripping the handles of the chair, then I pushed.

            I pushed the chair through the tropical underbrush, its wheels crushing the plants. We passed the flowering and fruit-giving plants, lit by the sun’s spotlight. We passed lush, green places where warm beams of light streamed through the trees. But my brother, ice cold, stared with unseeing eyes, his hands dangling from the arm rests and barely brushing the leaves that slipped beneath the chair’s wheels. I pushed faster. I could hear Eva behind me, trying to keep up. But the shore was in sight. I had to reach the shore.

            Finally, I passed the last tree, and I was running through the sand to the ocean.

            Eva called for me to wait, and I halted, inches from the waves. She came up beside me, her hair flowing in the breeze. She gazed up at the sky, the sinking, orange sun resting just above the water. She turned to me, and then to our brother, who sat still, his head tilting to one side. I felt anger rising in my chest. My head burned.

            “He can’t see it,” I said. “He can’t hear it. He…he can’t even breath this fresh air. He…he can’t…”

            I stopped, gasping for breath. My sister laid a hand on my shoulder comfortingly as I struggled to breathe, to stay standing.

            “He can feel it,” she said. “Somehow. It may sink in. We have to hope.”

            I nodded, halving over, clutching my chest, my head swimming. My forehead dripped in sweat, and my heart quickened.

            “Ernest!” my sister cried. She quickly slipped off her sandals and stepped into the water. “Ernest, come in. Cool down.”

            I nodded again, slipping off my own shoes. I stepped in. Eva walked backward, inching her way deeper and deeper, leading me through, the waves reaching for my heels and dragging me further and further in.

            My breathing slowed, my pulse steadied. I looked back at my brother, dying on the shore, the white foam drawing up and licking the edge of the wheelchair before sinking back, then rising and falling over and over again, slowly drifting closer and closer to the black wheels.

            I dug my bare toes into the sand. My sister smiled at me and ducked under the water, her golden hair flowing on the surface, looking like the reflection of the sun that sank deeper and deeper into the sea. And as I stood, relaxing in the ocean’s hold, I could feel the tide rising.