Total pages in book: 106
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99949 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 500(@200wpm)___ 400(@250wpm)___ 333(@300wpm)
“I was already in the army when doctors finally diagnosed him just after he turned ten. CRPS. Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Rabbit had type two CRPS which is pretty rare in kids. It’s caused by an injury that affects the nerves and if it isn’t caught soon enough, it spreads. When Rabbit was a baby, he fell off the changing table when a nanny was changing his diaper and broke his arm. The pediatrician who’d been treating Rabbit and telling my parents he was just being a fussy kid had ignored the symptoms that started to appear after the cast was removed. His arm was red and swollen but the doctor said to just put some ice on it. My parents had been overseas the whole time, so they never saw for themselves how bad it was. They just took the doctor’s word for it. It went on for weeks and then his arm began to turn cold. Rabbit’s nanny was too afraid of losing her job to tell my parents, who were in Switzerland at the time, that there was something really wrong. The doctor had talked to my dad and stepmom on the phone and told them Rabbit probably had some minor nerve damage in the arm that would eventually heal itself. He prescribed pain medications for Rabbit which would help for a while but then the symptoms would come back and the doctor would just up the dosage.”
Lincoln shook his head. “That fucking lazy prick…”
He didn’t finish the statement and he didn’t need to. It was clear what he wasn’t saying out loud. If the doctor had taken the time to consider Rabbit’s symptoms rather than writing him off as just being a fussy child, things might have turned out differently.
“I’d been wanting to join the army for a long time, but I was too afraid to leave Rabbit. He was the one who talked me into going. He was only ten, but he had this way of understanding other people…”
Lincoln shook his head again like he couldn’t really find the words to describe his brother’s nature. He sighed before continuing. “My parents had been traveling off and on for years the whole time we were little, but my father’s company started having financial trouble so they ended up staying home indefinitely so he could deal with it. Knowing they’d be there to take care of him made it a little easier for me to leave Rabbit. I ended up leaving the day before my father and stepmother got home. I had no interest in seeing them and the feeling was mutual.”
I kept silent even as I mentally raged at the people who not only should have made Lincoln a part of their family but who never should have dumped their kids, especially one who was dealing with such severe medical issues, in the hands of strangers.
“When my parents finally saw for themselves how bad Rabbit was doing, they took him to see several specialists and finally got a diagnosis. Rabbit’s symptoms were the worst any of the doctors who examined him had ever seen. They tried all kinds of pain management treatments but anything that gave him some relief never lasted. The pain was like a cancer spreading throughout his body. Since I’d already been deployed to the Middle East by the time he was diagnosed, I had no idea what the diagnosis was or the extent of how bad things had gotten for him since I’d left. I’d done lots of video chats and phone calls with him whenever I could but didn’t realize he’d been downplaying his symptoms so that I wouldn’t worry. He wanted me to be focused on my duties so that I’d make it home alive.”
Lincoln paused and used his free hand to swipe at his eyes. “He was in so much pain, Theo. Water running over his skin, a breeze coming through his window… all of it was agony for him even when he was drugged to the gills. They kept upping his pain medicine, but the relief never lasted long. He was confined to bed, but even that was torture because the sheets made his skin burn. The doctors tried all kinds of different things to make him comfortable, but nothing worked short of sedating him to the point that all he did was sleep.”
Lincoln fell silent for a moment. He seemed to have regained his composure, but I was a fucking mess. I ached for what Lincoln’s little brother had been forced to go through, what his family had had to witness and how helpless they must have felt not to be able to do anything for the teenager. I lifted each shoulder to try and wipe the streaming tears from my cheeks.
“My dad was the head of the investment firm in New York that he’d helped start, and even with the financial problems the company was experiencing, he’d amassed a personal fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, so he had a lot of cash to throw around. He spent endless amounts of money flying specialists in from other countries to see Rabbit who was pretty much living at the children’s hospital at that point. Every one of those doctors told my father and stepmother the same thing. They could continue to manage his pain, but it would need to be in a clinical setting because the amount of medicine he’d need just to keep him relatively comfortable would need to be closely monitored. My parents knew what they weren’t saying, though… there was no cure.”