The phone felt heavier than any crash cart handle as I stood in the kitchen, Tyler’s words replaying in a loop I couldn’t mute. Six pills gone. A brother with a prescription that had become a personality. A mother whose trust I had signed for the day I moved her into my spare room. I dialed Jason first, not the doctor, not the police—because habit and history have their own triage system. His voice came thick, defensive, then abruptly boyish when I said Tyler’s name. “He saw?” Jason asked, and something in me hardened; there is no misinterpreting a question like that. I told him about the locked box that would arrive, about the conversations he would not be part of until he chose help. He cursed, then cried, then whispered that he didn’t remember taking them, which was somehow worse than if he’d bragged. In the hallway, Tyler traced the grain of the floor with his finger, listening, learning too soon how adults sound when they are corner… Continues…
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