“What’ve you done?” Mom screamed in the backyard. Goose bumps rose all over my arms as I saw Mom’s glasses full of tears, her hands over her short brown hair, standing on concrete surrounded with fresh blood. I covered my nose with my right hand as the rusty smell polluted the air. I turned to look at my brother Albert standing behind Mom staring at the puddles of blood. The sneakers he wore were no longer white but red, especially his right one. The bottoms of his gray sweat pants were also bloody. His blue t-shirt, which matched his eyes, was the only thing he wore that didn’t have red spots. “Has Albert killed someone?” I thought.

I grabbed Mom by the arm and pulled her inside the house and locked the door. “Don’t move from here. I’ll be right back,” I said and left her sitting on a couch in the den. I ran to the kitchen, picked up the phone and called 911. “He’s schizophrenic and…Yes, he might have a weapon and he might’ve done something. Our backyard’s covered with blood and so is he. He weighs four hundred pounds,” I told the operator.

After five minutes, we heard the sirens, the police parking in front of our house. They pulled out their guns, loaded them and got out of their cars. Mom and I met them halfway and guided them towards the backyard. I opened the fence, looked around and said, “Albert’s gone!”

*

As a child, no matter how bad he had the flu, Albert would spit out pills like a shooting machine. Mom told me she’d always find several pills on the floor and some hidden under his pillow. Even as a teenager, Albert would try to run away and Dad had to hold his arms behind his back, while Mom tried to open his mouth just so he could swallow a couple of pills. Mom always wanted a girl, but three years after Albert’s birth, she got stuck with another boy.

Albert’s psychiatrist, Dr. Wayne, says schizophrenia can be genetic. A person can hear voices, have hallucinations, be paranoid and even get violent. It usually develops in the early twenties. But it’s also triggered by a dramatic experience.

On no-school days, Albert would hop in Dad’s taxi cab every morning. At bed time, I’d ask Albert about his ride in the cab. Albert said that as soon as they’d arrived at the airport, he’d roll down his window and watch airplanes fly above Dad’s cab. Dad would pick up customers at the airport and drop them off at different hotels. Albert told me he would look out from the passenger’s window and count the floors in the Hilton’s tower. His neck got sore from looking up, so he never finished counting.

“Can we spend the night at the Hilton, Dad?” Albert asked one night.

“Not tonight, kiddo,” Dad replied.

Three years later, Dad began to have chest pains, so he would come home from work early in the afternoon, out of breath. Mom looked through the Yellow Pages, picked up the phone and set up an appointment with a cardiologist.

The night before it happened, Dad had been coughing, sneezing and vomiting. Dad got up late for work the next morning and took Albert with him. Dad was driving in

the airport, five mph, pain running through his chest like a sword. He let go of the wheel. The cab hit a post next to the sidewalk.

“I turned to look at Dad and thought he had fainted,” Albert said with tears in his eyes. “The security guard gave Dad CPR, but couldn’t bring him back. I started to shake him. ‘Dad, wake up.’ But his face had no color and his hands felt like ice.”

One night, Albert came running to my bed. He tapped my shoulder and told me he felt the walls in his room move around in a circle. I got up from bed and followed him to his room.

“I don’t see any walls moving,” I said.

“I swear they were moving.”

“You were dreaming.” I went back to bed, pulled up the sheets and covered my face.

Albert then, began to hear voices.

“Did you guys say something?” He asked Mom and I.

He started talking to himself and wouldn’t notice me standing next to him.

“What did you say?” I asked him.

“Huh?” He turned to look at me, his blue eyes opened wide. “No, nothing,” he said.

“Hey, this guy from school is having a party, you want to come?” I asked him.

“I don’t feel like going anywhere.” He walked to his room and closed the door.

Albert was diagnosed with paranoia and schizophrenia two years later—he was twenty-one. So Albert had no other choice but to take one 30 mg tablet of

Abilify per day. At least that’s what we thought, until one night he didn’t want to go to bed.

“I’m not sleeping in my room tonight,” he said.

“What’s wrong? Mom asked wearing her blue-striped pajamas.

“I’m not going there.”

“Are you feeling all right?”

“There’s this lady.”

“What lady?”

“I keep seeing this lady in my room.”

“What? Have you been taking your medication?”

“She…she has a long nose, wears a big black hat, a long brown dress, she has a strong masculine voice and keeps t-telling me to get a knife and…”

I pulled out my mattress from my room and put it in his room, next to his bed. I then walked back to the living room.

“Albert, it’s okay,” I said. I’m here.”

From then on, we made sure he didn’t skip any of his tablets.

*

It has been over a year since he skipped his medication. And maybe we have become too confident and not kept an eye on him as before.

As the three cops saw the blood spilled across the concrete, they called on their radios for more back-up. Three more cop cars arrived at the scene, split up with the others already there, and drove around the neighborhood to look for a four-hundred-pound man with his shoes full of blood.

While Mom and I were still outside looking for Albert, we heard some loud knocks coming from the front door. We went back inside the house. I went ahead of Mom, walked through the kitchen, through the living room, and opened the front door.

“I feel dizzy,” he said, leaning against the screen door. “I can’t see anymore.” “Mom, it’s Albert,” I said.

“Oh, my God, he’s fainting,” Mom cried as she approached the door and stood next to me. I tried to open the screen door, but Albert’s tremendous weight closed it right back. One of the police cars came back to check if we had any news, and if we were okay. They saw Albert leaning against the screen door.

“He’s fainting; he’s fainting,” Mom cried out to the three police men as they approached the front door. Two of them grabbed Albert’s arms, placed his arms around their necks while the other opened the screen door and dragged him inside the house. They set Albert, semiconscious, on the couch, took off his right sneaker and sock. The men looked around his foot for any cuts or bruises, and found a vein sticking out of his right ankle on the left side.

“It seems like a vein burst,” one of them said. “He’s lost a lot of blood.” My eyes watered.

“How’d he cut himself?” Mom asked her face covered in tears.

“He didn’t,” said one cop. “This is common in very overweight people. A vein can suddenly burst from all the pressure in their ankle. Ma’am, do you have a rag, or anything I can use to stop the blood?” As Mom walked to the hallway, the phone’s extension cord got wrapped around her foot. She leaned over to reach for the wall in the hallway, untangled the cord from her foot and continued walking. Mom opened the closet door in the middle of the hallway and took the first piece of rag she saw.

I took the white rag from her and tore it in half. I leaned over and wiped the sweat from Albert’s forehead with a rag. I gave the other rag to one of the policemen. He wrapped the white rag around Albert’s foot, made a knot and held it tight. “This’ll help stop the bleeding until the paramedics get here,” said the cop.

I could hear the sirens around the corner. But then Albert opened his mouth and gasped for air. His whole body shook and convulsed as if he were having a seizure.

“What’s happening to him?” Cried Mom. “Oh, Lord, please, please no!” Mom said she felt as if the living room was spinning. If it weren’t for one of the paramedics who held her back, she would’ve hit the floor. He helped Mom towards the couch and told her she needed to lie down and rest. He then put an oxygen mask on Albert.

“I’m here Albert.” I whispered in his ear. “You’re going to be all right.” He moved his head up and down.

“His blood pressure’s very low,” one of the paramedics said.

“He needs a transfusion,” another said. Three of them put him on a stretcher, and the other two strapped him down. The stretcher seemed to be wide and sturdy enough for Albert. I got inside Mom’s van and drove behind the ambulance to Rio Grand Hospital.

While Albert laid in one of the beds in the emergency room, the nurses got his right wrist, hooked him up to an I.V. and they let the bag filled with blood and saline flow through one of his veins.

“Ah, stop! Stop!” Albert screamed in one of the emergency rooms, as the surgeon grabbed a needle, inserted a thread into the needle’s eye and pressed the needle through the skin of his ankle. He ran the thread under Albert’s burst vein, pulled the needle out from the other end, took the threads from each end and made a knot. The doctor inserted another thread into the needle’s eye and repeated the same procedure.

“This will seal his wound, so he won’t have a vein burst again,” said the doctor.

Two male nurse’s assistant came in and rolled his bed with the I.V. out in hallway in front of the elevators. One of the elevators opened. They rolled his bed into the elevator and walked in. I walked in behind them and one of them pressed the button to the sixth floor.

“What’s in the sixth floor?” I asked.

“That’s the medical unit. The patient’s stable, but we still have to monitor his blood pressure to make sure it doesn’t go down,” one of them said.

The nurses in the sixth floor let me stayed in the room with Albert. I sat on a chair next to him. After his eye lids closed, I closed mine.

The next morning, the doctor came in, checked his blood pressure and his heart with a stethoscope. “Are you a relative?” He asked.

“Yes, he’s my brother.”

“The patient’s doing very well. He’s ready to go home. I’ll have the nurse bring the release papers to be signed,” said the doctor. After I signed the papers, a nurse’s assistant brought a wheelchair. The assistant pushed the wheelchair to the elevators. I walked in behind them and pressed the button to the first floor main lobby. He took Albert to the front of the main lobby. I brought the van from the parking lot and pulled over in front of the entrance. I stepped out and helped him get inside the van.

“Let’s go home now, Albert,” I patted him in the back. Albert took a deep breath.

“Yeah,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Albert and I drove back home. As Mom saw us through the window, she opened the door.

Thank God you’re okay,” she said and kissed him on the cheek.

“I’m hungry,” said Albert.