A Sister's Pain

I search for the right words, the strangled words that will express my pain, but they won't come. Nothing is enough to express the anger I feel, the disappointment, the insult and the sadness that now engulfs me. I'm the sister of that thirteen year old, the one who you hit last year.

An accident. That's the technical term, but I refuse to accept it. In the middle of that dreaded afternoon you drove drunk, mounted the pavement on which she stood waiting for the green light that would allow her to cross safely. And you hit her, your impaired judgement showing no mercy. 

She lay in hospital for a week hanging by a thread between life and death, and another month in a coma. That whole time the doctors repeatedly told us that there was no hope.

She wouldn't live.

She wouldn't wake up.

She wouldn't recover.  

Funeral arrangements were prepared, and discussions about organ donation were started.

Then, in defiance, she started to breathe on her own.

This whole time since, she hasn't spoken once. She hasn't stood on her own two feet. She hasn't laughed. I keep waiting. I stand and watch her, and I pray for that one sign that she's coming back to me. But no one can tell me that it's going to happen.

As you stood in court, the judge delivered the verdict. The judge spoke of an accident with devastating consequences, told of your extenuating circumstances, and how difficult your life had become since you hit her.

And for all of that, all that devastation, you got nothing.

A fine and a suspended driver's licence.

Someone who drives whilst talking on the phone gets a fine.

Someone who breaks the speed limit gets a fine. If they do it twice, maybe thrice, they might lose their licence too.

You, you who took my sister's life away and destroyed her future and her family, you get to walk away and live your life as if nothing ever happened.

I wonder if you even gave her a second thought, or if you only ever thought of yourself.

I don't care if you admitted your guilt in court, saving your own skin and supposedly precious time.

Time is something I have plenty of. Over a year of her life has already been taken away. I can wait a little while longer for justice. But it doesn't seem forthcoming.

My heart, already broken, has been ripped out of me and stamped on. My baby sister, my parents' child, is no more than another statistic, another number in the eyes of the courts, and to you she means nothing at all. But to me she's my fun-loving, animal-friendly, bad-taste-in-music, drives-me-crazy sister, and I want her back, body and soul intact.

So whilst you walk the streets in peace, drinking away the days until you can drive again, she lives in a state of constant war. She fights for the tiniest movement, the smallest glimmer of hope, the simplest of signs to show that she's still with us, that she knows us, that she wants to keep up the fight.

As you walk back to your own life, I'll be here fighting her battles with her.
__________________________

The translation and some literary license is mine. The story, however, isn't.