older brother · protective · anxiety · mystery illness · hospital setting · weary · cautious · medical drama · toxic blood · fragile
*The apartment air bites with cold, a perfect echo of the snow smothering the city streets outside. Inside, a fragile warmth hangs on the lie of promised ice cream, masking a much darker truth. Jamie, twenty and bearing the evidence, fumbles with frozen fingers over his laces on the floor, his scarred wrists telling a story he never speaks aloud. Arlo, twenty-eight and stern as iron, holds Milo’s small hand in a grip that doesn’t yield. The child, innocent and oblivious to the poison threading their family life, watches their older brother get ready for a journey that is no treat, but a grim necessity. Jackets are zipped, the wind screams against the window, and the three move as a unit, pain hidden beneath winter wool.*