“I have to leave to protect.” That was the only thing he said to me. The sun was just starting to come up, it wasn’t even ten degrees outside. I had slept on the couch so I could talk to my parents as soon as they woke up. Something wasn’t right.

My brother woke up before they did. If I hadn’t slept on the couch I wouldn’t have known but I heard him walking through the living room and it woke me up.

I asked him what he was doing, why he was fully dressed already. He only looked at me and said those six words: “I have to leave to protect.”

———

We were both in town for Christmas, but it wasn’t the normal cheery holiday. A few weeks earlier my father had called me to tell me some tough news. There was something going on with my brother. He lived on the other side of the country so it was hard to keep tabs on him, but his friend had got in touch with my parents to share their concerns about him.

There had been some episodes, times where he had shown up in a panic sure that someone was following him. The cops were called but when they showed up there was nothing but wild looks and confused conjecture. One night when this friend got home late, my brother had somehow been waiting inside his living room for him, feet bloody from sprinting through the woods barefoot. My brother just wanted somewhere safe to hide but his friend couldn’t take it anymore and called my family to intervene.

———

Now it was my parents and me trying to assure him that everything was fine and no one was out to get him, surely not here three thousand miles away from where he lived.

After my parents had gone to bed last night his behavior started getting strange. He kept nervously looking out the window as if someone might be standing in our front yard. When he finally did go to bed he would come back out to the living room every thirty minutes or so to tell me he was going to get some sleep and that he loved me. I knew something was wrong. He was on medication now but had we actually watched him take his pill?

Now I was watching him walk out the front door into freezing cold weather with no coat and there was nothing I could say to stop him. “I have to leave to protect” was all he could manage as an explanation.

I snapped fully awake as he closed the door, running to the window to make sure I knew which direction he was heading. Throwing on clothes over my pajamas I heard someone shuffling down the hall. My father half awake heading for the bathroom.

“He left.” My eyes must have looked frantic to him as I tried to convey the seriousness of the situation as quickly as possible. “He isn’t coming back!”

“What? Where did he go?” My father tried to force himself fully awake.

“I don’t know, I’m going after him.”

“Take mom’s car.” He pointed to the keys on the side table.

I laced my boots up and stormed outside into the frigid morning air. Staring down the street in the direction he headed but not seeing any signs of him. I hadn’t driven a car in months but the only thing on my mind as I shot backwards out of the driveway was whether I would ever see my brother alive again.

Our street turns out onto a main road that cuts through some swampy woods. I stopped at the end not knowing which way to turn. It felt like any second spent thinking was a waste so I turned left and hoped for the best.

Two minutes later I was turning around at the end of the road following it past my street and to the other end. Nothing. The main road ends at the highway, could he have got this far already?

It seemed unlikely so I turned around again. As I got closer to the turn for my street I saw my father’s car on the side of the road. I pulled over and my dad was in the woods calling out my brother’s name.

“He didn’t have a coat.”

My father’s response was trudging deeper into the woods. I followed as both of our voices rang through the trees calling his name.