Connor was up in the front seat next to me, hastily buckled in, arms wrapped around his legs with his head resting on his knees.

“Breathe, Connor, just keep breathing,” I kept saying, but I couldn’t be sure if he was actually listening. “We’re almost to the hospital, I promise. Everything is going to be okay. The doctors there will help you and everything is going to be okay.”

Everything is going to be okay.

Connor had to be getting some air into his lungs because he was still conscious, but I’d never seen my little brother in such a bad state. I checked him at every stoplight, squeezed his arm, told him I loved him and that everything was going to be okay, but I don’t know how much of it he understood and how much was lost in the panic.

That I didn’t get us into an accident on the way to the hospital was an epic feat. The steering wheel jerked wildly in my hands when I bounced up the driveway in front of the ER entrance and quickly threw the car into park, yanking my seatbelt off so fast the edge burned my hand.

I wrenched open the passenger side door and unbuckled Connor, carefully scooping him up into my arms. He was light enough for me to carry, but my knees were knocking and everything was going all topsy-turvy. I staggered a few steps before I regained my balance. When I turned around with Connor in my arms, there were people in hospital scrubs rushing toward me. Somebody was coming out the doors with a gurney, and someone else was trying to take Connor from me.

Lipreading was never the easiest under the best of circumstances, but lipreading in this moment was not even remotely possible.

“Wait, please, my brother—he’s got CF, he can’t—”

No one seemed to hear me.

“Please, can you tell me what’s going on? I have to—”

A female nurse had a tight grip on my arm when they took Connor from me, lay him on the gurney, and slipped an oxygen mask over his face. I used the sleeve of my shirt to wipe at my eyes, trying to get rid of the tears, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t see clearly. The woman’s face was blurry and kept shifting in and out of focus.

I ripped my arm from her grasp and raced after the people wheeling Connor inside the hospital. I only got a few feet inside the ER before another nurse blocked my path. I knew she was speaking, but I was looking over her shoulder, watching Connor disappear through the double doors just past the check-in desk.

“That’s my brother, I need to go with him—I need to—”