[ WP ] Your little brother has been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer . When the Make A Wish program asks him what he wants he simply responded with , `` Kill my older brother before it 's too late . ''

Sammy was a smart little cookie. It's not just his straight A's in math and English, no - he had real engineering talents, I could tell. He'd been tinkering with those Lego robotic kits since he was five, and he made a functioning intestinal tract out of cellophane, wires and Heinz canned beans for his school's science fair. Did n't win a prize, of course - it was too disgusting, but we had a good laugh and his friends loved it. And when, for his tenth birthday, I got him an Arduino, he could n't be happier. Said he's going to build his own Sam-bot. 
 
 I remember smiling thinly at those words. I knew it would never happen. 
 
 You would ask me, of course - why had n't I moved out, changed cities, left him alone to grow and... live. The reason was simple. I'll tell you like I've told to the grey slabs of granite at the cemetary, brushing away autumn leaves from the names of my mother and father. `` Too late'', I squeezed out in the chill of November air. 
 
 Too late. 
 
 The damage had been done. 
 
 I brush away the moist, scarce hair from his forehead, and they still cling to his clammy skin. Sammy is twelve now, and the horror on his face is almost mature - it's silent and sunken, deep into his dark grey eyes that had grown too big for his skinny face. It's not an horror of a child afraid of a monster under his bed, but of an old man peering at his looming demise. 
 
 Sammy is all wired - there's tubes in his nose and bracelets over his frail wrists, and he's surrounded by an array of lifeless, beeping machinery that is a world away from his clever, funny little robots. The bed, too big for him, is like a sterile womb, a parody of the cozy bunk he had at home. I gaze at him with a bittersweet mixture of grief and acceptance, and think of the time before Sammy understood it all. When the colors had n't been washed out of his face by sickness and terror. As I straighten one of the trodes sucked to his body, the corresponding screen glitches and I quickly pull my hand away. Doctor Amir and the lady from the foundation do n't seem to notice. 
 
 `` Sammy has terminal lung cancer'', I explain to the woman. Laura, is n't that her name? Must be it. `` But it does n't mean that we do n't have hope and... I really want him to get something special''. 
 
 The Make-a-Wish rep nods her head rapidly - her hazel eyes glazed with that special sort of faked sweet enthusiasm you see only in people working with the elderly and in politics. 
 
 `` Everything for our little hero'', she cooes and leans over the hospital bed. `` Now, Sam, what would you like to do? Do you want to meet Spiderman? Visit Disneyland? Or maybe go swimming with dolphins? What's your very, very, very be-eeeee-estest and greatest wish?'' 
 
 `` He likes robots'', I offer a helping hand, and Sam shoots me such a look full of hatred, that even the usually daft oncologist sways aside in confusion. Him, but not Laura, who continues to clutch her papers and cling to Sammy's bed handle with the same Golden Retriever eagerness. 
 
 `` Can I...'', Sammy looks up at her, and a violent cough breakes his body in two before he can continue. One button-black eye briefly slips back to me, full of suspicion and anger. `` Can I tell you in private?'' 
 
 Laura smile and glances at me. There's a hint of want, of lust seeping through the flakes of her professional beige makeup, a stain of something not so `` kid-friendly'' and impure in the way she quirks her eyebrow. 
 
 `` Want to keep a secret from you big brother?'' 
 
 A cough, revebrating painfully in my ears, a howling chorus of jury and judges and executioners. 
 
 `` Yes''. 
 
 She thinks it's cute and I comply, walk out the door, lingering by the window into the room, pawing at the pale hospital windowsblinds... with my back th the corridor where doom looks down from every wall, from every scribbled rainbow and cheery crayon face. I press my ear to the glass: 
 
 `` Just... just one thing...'' the coughing muffles and breaks his voice. `` I know how it sounds, please...'' 
 
 What will Sam ask for? Maybe a trip to Japan, to see that big Gundam they built? He used to love that anime... 
 
 `` You have to kill my older brother before it's too late''. 
 
 Ah. 
 
 Too late. 
 
 There's a gasp and an angry shush from Mr. Amir, the `` Samuel, what are you even saying?'' and `` this is n't some joke, Ms. Corry's here to help you and the other kids, to make your dreams real, not be pranked'' and then, finally, the tearful pleading that for the first time exposes Sam for who he is - a frightened, dying child. My brother. 
 
 `` You do n't u-understand. You're all in danger - in real danger! Stan, he-... he's not even human...'' 
 
 Sam tells them, tells what he pieced together after Mom and Dad died, after he was diagnosed with cancer. What a smart kid! He tells them about what I am, and I look at my hands, enthralled by the patterns carved into my fingertips, by their outward normality. Ah, they are cold, always cold. I look at my chest, at the khaki T-shirt with the Quantico Academy logo printed in coal black, and think that noone will ever believe a scared kid. 
 
 Some part of me, the one that accepts the guilt, wishes it was n't true. Wishes for his words to carry more weight than this horrid wet rasp. Wishes for what - punishment? I guess. 
 
 Behind the closed door, Sammy is telling them impossible, fantastic things about me - that I'm a walking radioactive emitter, slowly inducing radiation poisoning into everyone in my immediate vicinity, damaging electronics, killing smaller animals. That his cancer, our parents' cancer is all my doing by the virtue of simple existence, of biological functioning within my body. That I know about it, that I use it for bad things and want to kill the President. Maybe take over the whole world. The word `` evil'' is sprayed out with a particularly deep cough and it cuts me. Still cuts me. 
 
 A bold picture painted in stark black and white, his testament. All little brothers think their elder siblings are the worst. I do n't know if it's really true in my case. My thoughts turn to the robots, lying down broken in his room. Useless, malfunctioning mess. 
 
 *Kill my older brother before it's too late*. 
 
 I push the door open, and in a second, draw both the doctor and Laura in a big hug from behind. My smile is beaming with the power of a hundred gigawatts as I chirp to Sam: 
 
 `` So, Sam, what have you picked?'' 
 
 Oh, but there's the other part. The one that does n't *care*. 
 
 My hands are cold, but my embrace is warm, and I wink to Sammy like we're conspirators. He's a smart kid, he'll understand. 

