Running can make a person pant, but for my brother it nearly made him faint. He tried and tried to run, to laugh, to socialize with normal people, but it was impossible.


It was nearly impossible, anyway. My brother had autism, before the discovery.


My brother and I had been sitting in our living room; I was reading his favorite novel aloud and he sitting awkwardly in his wheelchair, listening intently.


I had just gotten to chapter four when our father burst into the room, his eyes as wide as oranges.


“They… found a… cure…” he had panted, his hands resting on his bent knees.


I had stared blankly at him for what seemed like an eternity, at a loss for words.


“They found a cure?” I finally spat out in astonishment, leaping to my shaking feet.


“Yes, a cure.” He murmured, falling to his knees, surrendering to his obvious shock.


“H-How?” I stuttered, falling to my knees as well.


“I don’t know,” my father sighed, gazing at my brother sadly. “All they told me was that they had to do brain surgery on him. It may change the way he is forever.”


“What do you mean?” I asked hesitantly, afraid of the answer.


“I mean it may damage his personality; they would be altering the part of his brain that makes him who he is.”


I glanced at my brother quickly, who was rocking in his chair oblivious to the predicament lying at his feet. I got up silently and left the room.


As soon as I stepped out of the room I tumbled out of my house in a daze.


We can cure his autism! It’s possible! But he won’t be him anymore. He might not even remember who I am…


The last thing I saw was a blaring light before the world fell away from me.

***


“Honey, are you alright?”


Someone’s figure was a blur of color hovering above me as I opened my eyes.


“Where am I?” was all that I said as my vision returned.


My father was the figure I had seen, and when I turned my head I witnessed my brother propped up in an uncomfortable looking chair gazing at me in adoration.


“You’re in the hospital,” my father said, a look of sympathy featured his unshaven face. “It was your mother… She was a bit tipsy and she hit you on the way home. She was arrested and has to stay in jail for two nights.”


I sighed and tried to push myself up, but found this to be rather taxing seeing as I had a cast fitted on my right arm. I fell back down on my pillow with a plop.


“Sissy…” my brother said from the side, with a rather stupid but the entire same, adorable smile.


“I’m so sorry, dad,” I said, feeling like a total idiot. “If I hadn’t been so rash and ran out like that, I wouldn’t have tumbled out into the road. Now, you have two messed up kids to worry about…”


“It’s alright, honey,” my father said, patting my head softly. “It wasn’t your fault.”


I closed my eyes and allowed myself peace for about three minutes before I heard an awful thud from my right.


I jerked up and forced myself out of the bed, dashing to my fallen brother’s side. Crumbled and howling in pain, my brother looked like a poor little kicked puppy. He couldn’t help the way he was, but the two other patients crowding into the hospital room to point and laugh could.


I scrambled to my feet and ran up to the nearest women howling in laughter at my brother’s pain. I reared my good fist and jabbed it right into her nose.


She fell on her rump from the hit. Scarlet liquid flooding from her now crooked nose, she stared up at me in utter horror, and then stumbled out of the room with her acquaintance in tow.


The torture my brother received was enough to bring me to my senses. My brother need to be cured, if he didn’t remember me, so be it. His well-being served more important.


I turned to my father, whom was staring up at me in astonishment, and said, “He needs the treatment.”

My father looked as if I had just told him I was a flying fish, but then nodded, murmuring, “Yes, I know.”

***
On the day of the operation, I paced the floor outside the hospital room where my brother was being held. My father sat against the wall with his head in between his knees.

We were obviously both stressed to the max, and I, for one, was about to rip my head off if they didn’t open the doors already.

After an hour of waiting, the head-surgeon finally stepped into the hallway with a smile on his face.

“The operation was successful,” he said, pulling off his latex gloves. “Would you like to see him?”

I didn’t even answer; I entered the room as quickly as my feet would allow me.

My brother was sitting up in his bed looking confused. I gasped at the sight. He face no longer had that almost but not quite normal look about it; it looked as ordinary as any other young boy’s face could have. His arms and legs were no longer moving about on their own accord but lay simply on the bed’s surface.

I ran at him and embraced him in a tight hug, and felt his new body for the first time.

“Oh, sorry…” I muttered, pulling away nervously.

This is it, I gulped. He’s either going to remember me or he isn’t.

He cocked his head at me, and smiled.

“Sissy?”