When I got my first job as a teacher, I used to live with my older brother. He had his own businesses around the CBD which were very successful. He even had a girlfriend whom I knew he would one day make his wife. He had it all and I aspired to be like him.Everyday he would drive me to work before heading off to town to handle his business. It was his way of making things easier for me because I didn’t have a car and he knew how hard it was to get a matatu in the morning. He would also come and pick me up in the evening then we would go home together.
One day he was unusually late to pick me up in the evening and I got worried. I decided to go home alone and send him a message to tell him not to pass by.
Just as I was about to leave, I saw him pull into the driveway of the school and I was relieved. I sat at the back seat so I could finish some work that I still had.
After I entered the car I saw that he had been crying and I immediately asked what was wrong. “Sharon left me,” he said. Sharon was his girlfriend.
I felt sorry for him because I knew how much he loved her. I asked if we should leave the car at school and call a taxi because he didn’t look like he was in a good shape to drive. But he declined and I had to agree because I didn’t know how to drive.
When we were on Thika Road (before it was renovated) I remember he started crying again. I leant forward to tell him to just focus on driving we’d deal with everything when we arrived home. That was when I saw he had a bottle of beer in the front seat.
I told him to pull over because we both knew drunk driving is dangerous. At this point I was holding him on the shoulder. In an angry fit he tried to avoid my hand and ended up swerving onto the opposite lane. The next thing I remember is a loud bang and hitting my head on the roof of the car. I blacked out and I don’t remember anything else.
I woke up in the hospital and when I looked around I saw Sharon seated in the corner; she had been crying. She told me I had three broken ribs, a broken arm and a broken leg.
She then told me my brother had been thrown out of the car from the impact because he didn’t have a seatbelt on and cracked his skull after hitting the tarmac. He bled out before reaching the hospital.
I felt my heart drop to my stomach. My brother was gone and now I was all alone because both my parents died years ago. I didn’t even know what to say, I just found myself crying.
I remember looking up at Sharon and feeling an extreme hatred for her. She was the reason I was in this hospital bed in the first place. She was the reason my brother was now dead. I felt like I would have killed her myself if I wasn’t restrained by my injuries. I summoned some little energy and told her to leave immediately and never come back.
Sometimes I feel like it all was just a bad dream and when I wake up I will find my brother getting ready to go to work.
Then I actually wake up and my stomach still turns when I realize it is all reality and I have to live without my brother. I have never spoken to Sharon since and I don’t think I ever will.
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