Adrian
I woke up one morning with a throbbing headache. My head pounded and my tummy felt horrible. I looked out the window and realized that it was still early morning by how dark it was. I turned over in my bed and noticed my twin brother snoring, deep in sleep. I didn't know what to do, so I lay there in my bed for awhile, counting all the glowing stars on my ceiling that we both got for our fifth birthday.
Everything I did was only making my head and tummy feel worse. All of a sudden I got the chills, and I shook in my bed. It felt like someone had put ice cubes down my back, under the covers. It hurt so bad, I started to cry.
I couldn't get up to get my mom, so I yelled her name from my bed. Aaron sat up straight when I started screaming. My parents flew into our room with alarm. By this time I felt like I could be sick. My mom took one look at me and then said "Adrian, what's wrong!?!"
This was the first night in my life that I had ever felt pain. I had to go through things that most seven year old boys shouldn't have to go through. Instead of playing baseball with my friends or playing Lego’s with my brother, I sat in the hospital hooked up to machines and IVs, wondering what was going to go wrong next.
Anyway, my parents rushed me to the ER. The whole way there, I couldn't stop vomiting and crying. Aaron sat next to me in the car. He was crying too. No one knew what was going on or how it would change our lives as a family.
The doctors at the hospital gave me lots of medicine and then hooked me up to an I.V. I was so scared. My mom held onto my hand, and my dad was with Aaron in the hall. I just kept thinking about how much I wanted to go home.
The doctor who kept walking in and out of my room with a clipboard and papers in his hand came into my room one last time and asked my mom if he could speak to her in the hall. I don't know what they where saying, but I knew it couldn't be good.
I feel asleep before my mom came back. When I woke up, I was inside something really loud, and it shook back and forth. I was strapped to this board and the I.V. Was still in my arm. I looked up and saw my mom. She explained to me, this this fearful look on her face, that I was in a helicopter and that we were going to a different hospital.
I smiled because I had never been in a helicopter before, but I still knew something was wrong.


Aaron
Me and my brother hardly ever got sick. In the past when we went to the doctors office for what my mom called “check-ups,” everything was always fine. The doctor said we were “Healthy Boys!” So I didn't understand why Adrian had to go the hospital when all that hurt was his head and his tummy. I'm scared for him, I'm scared for me.
We had been at the hospital since 4 in the morning and now I was in the backseat of our black car.
Dad said they are transferring Adrian to a better hospital in the city. He said it's for special kids when they don't know what's wrong with them.
He had this confused, puzzled, and worried look on his face as we drove fast through all the New York City traffic. It takes one hour to get to the city from our neighborhood, but today it felt like it was taking days.
When I asked dad where Adrian was, he said he was in a helicopter. Now, I was jealous that Adrian got to ride in a helicopter and I didn't. It was 9 o' clock in the morning when we got to the huge hospital in the city.


Adrian
The doctors pushed me off of the helicopter and into this long hall that lead to two double doors with another long hall behind them. I stared up at the lights on the ceiling, but they made me dizzy because we were going so fast. I closed my eyes and tried to think about just breathing in and out. Before I knew it, I was in a comfy bed in a bright room with frogs randomly painted on the walls. I wasn't in this room for a long time because they took me into an even bigger room. Now my mom wasn't with me, and I started crying because I didn't know what was going on.
A lady with white clothes on and something on her face came over to me to tell me it was going to be ok.
“Just going to go through some surgery, sweetheart,” the lady said.
There was a poke in my arm and then I started dozing off. Everything got quiet. I blacked out.


*


*


*


*


*

*

*
When I woke up, I was in the bright room with the frogs on the wall again, and I hurt everywhere. My parents stood at the foot of my bed talking to a doctor. My mom was crying a lot. My dad never cried but here he was in front of me, crying like a baby.
What is wrong...? I wondered.



Aaron
I was out in the hall sitting in a chair when my dad walked out of Adrian's room. His face was red, and tears were running from his big blue eyes.
“Daddy...W-w-whats wrong?” I stammered.
“Your brother,” he said, ”is really sick. He has this thing, this... disease they call cancer.”
“Oh,” I said. He made it sound like Adrian was going to die...


Adrian
The doctor turned to me after he talked to my parents and said I was sick, really sick. He called it Childhood Leukemia, Acute Lymphoblastic.
“What's that?”I said.
My mom spoke up, saying it's a very rare kind of cancer. Her voice was raspy as she spoke, and I could tell she had been crying.
Then the doctor said that I could go home for awhile, while my parents made a decision.
He said the only way I could ever get better was if they took a stem cell my brother's head and put it in mine, but it was risky.
I didn't know what to say, because I didn't want my brother to feel my pain. So I just looked at both the doctor and my mom, and they looked back at me smiling, like that was supposed to make everything better.
I was scared and tired, and I hurt all over.
I wanted everything to be normal again.


Aaron
After awhile I got to see Adrian, but he was sleeping at the time. Watching him sleep made me tired; I wanted to sleep too.
I stood there and listened to the doctor tell my parents that we could all go home tonight and that if Adrian had any troubles, to just come back. We woke up Adrian and got ready to go home. One night home just was not enough to catch up on everything that was happening, because we would wake up tomorrow and have to come right back here. But this time, Adrian wasn't the only one going in to surgery. I was too.
When we got home I tried to play with Adrian, but all he wanted to do was sleep.


--The Next Day--


Adrian
We woke up very early and headed to the hospital for another day. Aaron and I had to have a blood test. The thing they put in our arms hurt, and we both cried. A few minutes later the test results came back, and we could tell if Aaron could donate his stem cell to me.
The nurse looked at the computer screen and smiled.
“He's the one!”she exclaimed.
Half an hour latter, I was in the same room as yesterday, this time with Aaron. Surgery began.


Aaron
I woke up before Adrian did, so I was able to go sit outside in the hall with my parents. I was in a lot of pain, and I couldn't walk, so they wheeled me in a wheel chair. I cried. My parents looked worried and exhausted.
My mom explained to me how this surgery worked. The doctors with there green scrubs on and the nurses dressed in white scrubs, put both of us to sleep. While we were asleep, they cut a deep hole in my head, to get to my brain. Right by my brain there were a ton of little stem cells. Carefully, without touching anything else they disconnected one and pulled it out.
After this they stitched my head back together and transferred the cell into my brothers head. He had to be in a coma because they were actually adding a cell to his brain. That was the risky part. Even through all this surgery, the cancer still wouldn't be cured, it would just be easier for Adrian to fight it.
Two hours later we were still waiting for Adrian when the doctor slowly walked out of the surgical room. He had a lost look on his face and I could tell right away something was wrong.
During surgery, they realized there was more cancer then they thought. The doctors still transferred my stem cell but it didn't do enough because the evil disease was spreading so fast. Adrian was stuck in this coma, hanging on to a thread of life. The only option left was the removal of life support. This was it.
My mom was hysterically crying, and my dad paced back in forth with his head bent in prayer.
I didn't know much, being only seven, but I figured out that with the way everyone was acting, my brother was dead. No longer would I have a twin brother, always by my side. I took back all the times I had ever said I hated him: I really didn't mean it. I wished that he had never gotten sick.


--Nine Years Later--



Aaron
It's 9 years later, and I still remember the day I lost my brother like it was yesterday. Everyone has their secrets and things they don't tell; mine is that I used to have a twin. Hardly anyone knows.
My parents tried to have another kid after that day, but it did not work. I'm still an only child. While running down the football field on Friday nights, passing the 50 yard line, I wonder what it would have been like having my brother here, by my side.
I wonder if we would have dated the same girls or gotten the same grades in school. From the day he got sick, to the day we went into surgery, it happened so fast. I don't regret one minute of going though all this pain, though, for it has made me stronger and braver. I wanted to fight to save my brother. I wanted to do anything I could so he could be here now. And sometimes, the best thing you can do is try.
Even though my twin brother rests now, cancer free in heaven, he will always live in my heart.