They'd used that line to shut me down through my entire childhood and adolescence. They were still using it when they took my life just before I turned eighteen.
So this time, I stared at the room full of baby supplies without a flicker of expression and pointed. "You've already decided to have it. Why even bother asking me?"
For a split second, both of them went quiet, caught off guard.
I said nothing. I turned around, picked up my battered old toy car, and headed upstairs.
There had always been a large, bright room on the second floor that sat empty. My parents said it was the guest room.
Only now did it click. It had never been for guests. It was for the brother who hadn't been born yet.
Back in my own cramped little room, the tears finally came.
I'd spent all those years swallowing my pride, enduring surgery after surgery through blinding pain, and they still believed it was my duty.
Every time I was scared, every time I begged for a moment to recover and hoped my mother would comfort me, all I got was a lecture. Sometimes worse.
"If you hadn't said you wanted a little brother, I never would've had a second child! He's here now. What makes you think you can just ignore him?"