Fall Again (a Michael Jackson fanfiction)

2. Hopes backstory

Hopes POV 🥀

When I was small, I wanted to be a paranormal investigator. I watched YouTube videos on it on my iPad, sitting on the sofa with my brown eyes blinking behind their glasses.

Then my brother James attempted suicide. I'd loved my big brother, we were closer than close. He was my only brother, but I had a little sister, Juliette, as well.
Me and Juliette weren't close like me and James were - she always kept herself to herself.

Me and James used to lie on the roof garden of our flat, staring up at the night sky. He was autistic, obsessed with stars and constellation. He would name each and every star to me.
He told me once that when he died, he would watch over me from the stars, making sure I was safe.

I didn't take that comment seriously - I assumed my brother would live healthily until old age. Then when he was 12 and I was 8, he was violently, sexually assaulted an by a stranger. I always vowed that if I ever met that stranger I would bash his head in with my little hands. 

My brothers mental health detoriated and he was diagnosed with PTSD as a teenager. He was put in therapy, but not seen as a risk.
3 days after Christmas, mum found him bleeding in the bath.

I'll never forget that day. Mum was screaming, sirens wailing, paramedics running through the flat, as I held my crying little sister in my arms as we hid in our shared bedroom, terrified.
She gripped my hand with her cold one, looked at me with big brown eyes so like mine, and asked "Is Jamie going to die?"

I wanted to assure her, and myself, that no - James would survive and live a long happy life. But I knew this suicide attempt was only the start. He made a few more until he was eventually hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital. That hospital probably saved his life.

That's when I made up my mind to be a mental health nurse, work in a mental hospital like the one my beloved big brother had been detained in. 
I would save people like those nurses saved James.