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My name is Brandon.  I’m eighteen now.  I’m about to be sent to prison for the next fifteen years.  You may be asking why that is?  You’d probably laugh if I told you my own father is sending me there.  I did wrong, but I sure never expected I’d be paying for it like this.

 

Let me start at the top.

 

When I was six, my mother was diagnosed with cancer.  She had numerous tumors all throughout her body.  By the time I was ten, my mom had rapidly started to deteriorate.  She lost most of her memory because of a cluster of tumors located where her head and neck meet.

 

Unfortunately, I was stuck taking care of Mom so my father could work two full-time jobs.  He had to work that hard because otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to afford to pay the doctor bills. 

 

Mom had to take multiple medications all throughout the day.  Since my father was working and we could not afford to pay for a nurse, I was in charge of giving her the medication on time and in the right dosage.

 

I was pretty upset by the whole thing.  I was shook up when I realized that my mother couldn’t even remember if I had given her the meds.  I started to wonder: what was she taking that made her like that?  What made her forget everything and take away that amount of pain?

 

One day, shortly after my thirteenth birthday, I had a friend over to play videogames.  I had to stop to give Mom her meds.  I didn’t really want to stop, but I knew that she needed them.  My friend, Chris, asked me what I give her so I rattled off the different types.

 

Chris became very eager to help.  As I was setting everything out, he told me that I should try one of her pills.  He said I would get a ‘good buzz’ and forget how crappy my life was.  I told him that I could never do that.  My mom needed those meds, not me.

 

I don’t know how he knew the things he did, but Chris kept telling me how the medication my mom was on was great for getting high and relaxing.  I again refused.  He asked what it would matter if I gave them to her, since she couldn’t even remember taking them most of the time.

 

I refused again, and he finally dropped the subject. 

 

Two weeks later, it was time for mid-term report cards to come out.  Because I had no time for homework, I was suffering severely that quarter in most of my classes.  With all the hours I had to be there helping my mom, I barely managed an hour to myself each day before I passed out after dinner.

 

I didn’t know what to do.  I knew that my father would flip if he saw that I was failing three of my classes.  The principal had talked to me about maybe repeating seventh grade.

 

I just wanted to get home and forget that that day ever happened.  As soon as I got off the bus, I had to go check on my mother.  She was asleep.  She would wake up until around four o’clock, so I had another thirty minutes to myself.

 

I went to my room and called up Chris.  He offered to come hang out with me so I waited for him in the backyard.  I was afraid that, when he came over, he would want to talk me into doing something stupid.  Boy, was I right.

 

He arrived at my house just as I was setting up my mother’s medications.  Chris started out easy, just letting me talk about my crappy day.  But then he goaded me, saying I should take one of the painkillers because it would ease how much I was freaking about the midterm report.

 

I don’t know.  Maybe I was tired of him trying to pressure me or maybe I believed what he said. Either way, I took them to shut him up.

 

Okay, I admit: I enjoyed the feeling.  I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I wanted to forget.  I mean, wasn’t it her fault that I did badly in school anyway?  If my mom hadn’t been sick, I would have been able to spend more time studying.  It was not my fault. 

 

She owed me that high.  She owed me those pills. 

 

I came home from school the next day and prepared the meds, with the exception of the pain medication.  That was mine.  She would never miss it.  I just had to tell dad that I gave it to her; he would never know any better, because he was never home.

 

I would only take one each day.  Then slowly it progressed to two each day, and then three, and so on.  By the time I was sixteen, I was up to five pills a day.  I also would take any muscle relaxers or other good medications that they gave to her.  I found that I got a good buzz off those meds, because the doctors were giving her full strength narcotics. The doctors had known for some time that there was never going to be a change in my mother.  They prescribed all of these drugs as a means to make her comfortable until the day that she passed.

 

About six months ago, my mother finally left us.  She died peacefully; at least I hoped that it was peaceful.  The day she died, I had made sure to stash everything that she had left of the painkillers.  Two weeks after she died, I ran out of her pain medication.

 

What I did not know is that my father had had a friend trying to help some during the day.  The friend was suspicious of me and had been counting meds for some time.  That friend had told my father that she thought the number of pills was off.  My father ignored her.  He didn’t want to believe that I could be so cold-hearted.  But I was.

 

The day that I ran out of the pain medication was the worst day of my life.  I ran out and called in the refill.  I didn’t think that anyone would have known my mother was dead.  Maybe someone had called the pharmacy to notify them or perhaps her social security number showed she was deceased.  Either way, the pharmacist said that they could have the medication ready within the hour.

 

I showed to pick up her medication.  Then the cops came in and arrested me.

 

I called my father from jail and asked him to bail me out.  He told me that I deserved to rot in jail for what I had done to my mother, that being arrested proved his friend was right about me.

 

When I went for arraignment, my father showed up.  He told the district attorney and the judge that he wanted to press charges on me for stealing my mother’s medications from the house, too.  The judge said I had to sit in jail with no bond.  Not like I would have had the money to get myself out anyways. 

 

When I went to court for fraud, they added multiple drug charges, attempted manslaughter, and a theft charge.  The attempted manslaughter came from me stealing my mother’s meds from the house.  They said that it was causing her pain and I could have killed her.  I didn’t know that the pain medication was used to keep her airways open, one of the reasons it was prescribed to her.

 

I couldn’t believe it.  I could have killed her…

 

I was charged as an adult and plead guilty.  What I did was wrong and I deserved to be punished.  I had broke my father’s heart and I just couldn’t stand to see him suffer anymore.  He did not deserve it; he’d already lost my mom.

 

The judge handed down the sentence: fifteen years with no possibility for parole.

 

My heart sank.  I’d made a mistake.

 

I looked back at my father, who sat there crying, unable to look at me.  In the whole month, it was the only time I had seen him.  I had written him a letter, begging him and hoping someday he would forgive me for what I did.

 

As the court guards lead me away, I doubt that I will ever have any visitors come to see me.  I probably don’t deserve to have anyone care about me.

 

I took one final look at my father.

 

I could have killed my mother just because I was feeling crappy over taking care of her.  My father had worked two jobs to make sure she was okay, but I couldn’t give her a few hours without feeling bitter.  It was only a few hours…  Only a few hours that she took, but I took from her anyway.  I stole from her.  Now those pills and I had stolen the next fifteen years of my life.