The first thing I saw was the bathroom tile—white, cold, and too close—like the floor had risen up to meet me.

The second thing I saw was my brother’s phone.

Not his face. Not his hands reaching for me. Not panic, not help, not “Are you okay?” Just a glowing screen held steady in the doorway at 2:47 a.m., recording my body like evidence in a case he’d already decided I would lose.

An oxygen mask pressed against my mouth. Plastic straps pulling at my cheeks. A paramedic’s voice cutting through the haze: “Sir, when did you last take your insulin?”

My tongue felt too big, my throat too dry. “Three hours ago,” I managed. “Before bed. Like always.”

Twelve years. That’s how long insulin had been my quiet contract with life. I wasn’t careless. I wasn’t reckless. I was the kind of diabetic who carried extra glucose tabs, who logged doses, who knew the difference between “a little off” and “something is wrong.”

The monitor beeped again. Another paramedic murmured a number I’ll never forget, not because it was dramatic, but because it was so wrong it sounded like a typo.

“Six-fifty-eight.”

I saw the lead paramedic glance past me, straight at Caleb in the doorway. Like he was trying to decide whether this scene was an accident… or a setup.

Caleb didn’t move. He didn’t ask questions. He didn’t look confused or scared. He just watched his own screen, thumb hovering, filming.

That chill that crawled up my spine had nothing to do with the oxygen or the sweat on my skin.

It was the chill of realizing the person closest to you is not witnessing your crisis.

He’s collecting it.

Seven weeks earlier, my father died at sixty-five—one of those blunt, American tragedies that happens between errands. A heart attack. A collapsed body in a Columbus, Ohio kitchen. A siren. A stretcher. A funeral home brochure slid across a table with shaking hands.

My dad’s estate wasn’t subtle. He’d built it the old-fashioned way: risk, grit, and commercial real estate deals that turned into steady money. A small portfolio of storefronts, a few warehouses, some office space on the edge of downtown—assets that appraisers valued around $4.8 million.

And Dad, for all his faults, had been clear.

Fifty-fifty.

Me and Caleb.

Simple. Clean. Fair.

Except Caleb had been Dad’s business partner for the last nine years, while I’d been teaching high school chemistry three states away, trying to turn bored teenagers into people who didn’t fear the periodic table.

Caleb had the keys.

Caleb had the files.

Caleb had the contacts.

Caleb had been in Dad’s house since the funeral, “handling probate,” “organizing paperwork,” “keeping things from falling apart.”

By the time I drove down from Michigan to our hometown, Columbus had already hardened into winter: gray skies, salted roads, gas station coffee that tasted like burnt pennies. I arrived twelve days after the funeral with a suitcase, my glucose kit, and that naive belief that siblings become better people in grief.

I told myself I was doing the responsible thing—staying at Dad’s house until the estate settled, showing up to meetings, keeping it clean, making sure the fifty-fifty stayed fifty-fifty.

The first week, my diabetes started acting… strange.

Not “a little high because you ate bad diner food” strange. Not “stress hormones are messy” strange.

Uncontrolled.

I’m thirty-five. Diagnosed with type 1 at twenty-four. I’ve lived with it long enough to know my patterns. My last A1C—four months before Dad died—was 6.1, the kind of number my endocrinologist in Ann Arbor, Dr. Michael Carter, praised like a gold star.

So when my blood sugars started spiking despite my routine, I blamed grief.

Of course I did.

Grief messes with sleep. Food. Cortisol. Everything.

But grief doesn’t do this.

Before bed I’d check my blood sugar—let’s say 135. Slightly high, but manageable. I’d take my usual long-acting dose: thirty-six units, same dose I’d been steady on for two years.

Then I’d wake up expecting ninety to one-ten.

Instead: 380. 420. 511.

Numbers that felt like a different person’s life. Numbers I hadn’t seen since diagnosis.

I started checking every two hours. I set alarms. I drank water until my stomach sloshed. The thirst was relentless, the bathroom trips humiliating, my vision blurry like someone had smudged the world with a greasy thumb.

I called Dr. Carter’s office and spoke to his nurse practitioner, Lauren Hayes. She asked all the right questions—diet changes? infection? unusual stress?—and I said yes, yes, yes: my father is dead, I’m in his house, my brother is running the estate like a private kingdom.

She increased my long-acting dose to forty-four units and told me to call back in four days.

Four days later, it was worse.

Caleb played the role of concerned brother beautifully.

He brought me bottles of water when I said I was thirsty. He offered to cook dinner so I could “rest.” He asked about my readings, shook his head with a sympathetic little frown when I told him the numbers.

One night, he sat across from me at the kitchen counter while I prepared my injection.

“Is it scary?” he asked, watching me draw the insulin into the syringe.

That question should have been innocent. Curiosity. Empathy.

But it landed wrong. Like a stranger asking how your locks work.

“You get used to it,” I said. “It’s routine. Like brushing your teeth.”

He nodded slowly, eyes drifting to the vial.

“Where do you keep it?” he asked.

I stared at him. He knew. He’d lived here. He’d watched me manage this condition for over a decade.

“In the upstairs bathroom fridge,” I said. “In the door. Dad installed that little fridge when Mom was sick.”

Caleb nodded again, like he was filing it away.

Two days later, we had our first official meeting with Dad’s estate lawyer, Thomas Whitaker of Whitaker & Associates. Whitaker had that polished, Ohio-professional energy: firm handshake, measured sympathy, a desk that smelled faintly of leather and printer toner.

I tried to sit upright and look competent.

But my body was betraying me.

I excused myself to the restroom twice. Then a third time.

Whitaker paused mid-explanation. “Do you need a break?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, face hot. “Just… health stuff.”

Caleb leaned back in his chair, hands folded, the picture of patience. “We should reschedule,” he said, like the best brother in the world. “He clearly isn’t feeling well.”

Whitaker agreed.

And I walked out of that office feeling like I’d been quietly discredited.

That night, desperate, I did something I shouldn’t have.

I increased my dose without medical supervision.

Fifty-eight units instead of forty-four.

My blood sugar before bed: 371.

The next morning: 552.

I sat on the edge of my childhood bed staring at the meter like it had insulted me.

That is not how insulin works.

That’s not resistance.

That’s… absence.

I booked an emergency appointment with a local endocrinologist in Columbus, Dr. Allison Grant. She had a calm, analytical voice and gray streaks in her hair that made her seem like someone who didn’t panic—but also didn’t miss details.

She reviewed my logs. She examined injection sites. She ordered labs: c-peptide, thyroid, antibodies. She stared at the numbers longer than most doctors would.

Then she said, carefully, “This doesn’t make physiological sense.”

The lab results came back normal for type 1 diabetes. No infection. No hormone storm. No antibodies sabotaging absorption.

Dr. Grant called me herself.

“I want you to come in,” she said. “Bring your insulin vials. All of them.”

There was a pause—one of those pauses that holds a thought a professional won’t say out loud.

“Are you thinking the insulin is bad?” I asked.

“I don’t want to speculate,” she replied. “But we need to rule out environmental factors.”

That night, I gathered my vials.

Three of them. The one in the bathroom fridge I’d been using. A backup in the same fridge. And an unopened vial in my suitcase from Michigan.

I lined them up on my dresser like little glass soldiers.

Then I went downstairs to heat leftovers.

Caleb was in the kitchen scrolling his phone.

“You okay?” he asked, looking up. “You’ve seemed stressed.”

“I’m fine,” I said, but my voice came out sharp. “Just… the numbers. They’re insane.”

He nodded with the right amount of concern, like a man performing compassion for an audience. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do. We’re in this together. Dad would’ve wanted that.”

That line—Dad would’ve wanted—hit like a soft hammer.

After dinner, I went upstairs to take my nightly dose.

And one of the vials on my dresser had moved.

Not dramatically. Not thrown across the room. Just shifted—an inch to the left, like someone had handled it and tried to put it back without being obvious.

My hands went cold.

I told myself I was paranoid. Grief. Stress. Sleep deprivation. I told myself I was seeing ghosts in glass.

So I did the only thing that could shut my brain up.

I didn’t use the insulin from the house.

I drove to a 24-hour pharmacy off I-71 and bought three fresh vials. Even with insurance, they cost enough to make my stomach twist.

But I needed proof.

Back at the house, I took my nightly dose from the sealed pharmacy vial.

My blood sugar before injection was 382.

I woke up and checked again.

Normal. Clean. Exactly what should happen.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the screen until my eyes burned.

The insulin from the pharmacy worked.

The insulin from Dad’s bathroom fridge did not.

Which meant—no matter how badly my heart wanted to deny it—something had happened to my medication.

I called Dr. Grant. “It’s the insulin,” I said. “The fresh one worked immediately.”

Her tone sharpened. “Bring the old vials in today,” she said. “We’ll send them to a forensics lab. Chain of custody. Formal report.”

I went to the bathroom fridge to grab the vials.

The one I’d been using was still there.

The backup was gone.

I checked my bedroom. My suitcase. The bathroom. The dresser. The trash. I searched like a man trying not to learn the truth.

Twenty-five minutes later, I stood in the hallway with my pulse pounding.

Someone had removed my backup vial.

Someone who knew I was suspicious.

Someone who lived in the house.

Someone who was my brother.

I drove to Dr. Grant’s office with the remaining vials. A lab tech photographed them and filled out chain-of-custody paperwork like this was narcotics, not a life-sustaining hormone.

“These go to Ohio State’s medical forensics lab,” Dr. Grant said, voice low. “If there’s substitution or dilution, they can identify it.”

“How often does this happen?” I asked.

She held my gaze. “In my career, I’ve seen a handful of pharmaceutical manipulation cases,” she said. “Every one involved a family member with incentive.”

That word—incentive—made my stomach drop.

Because if Caleb could paint me unstable, medically incompetent, unfit to manage money… he could make a case in probate court to control my share “for my own good.”

He could turn fifty-fifty into “temporary oversight.”

And temporary has a way of becoming permanent.

That night, I didn’t go back to Dad’s house.

I checked into a downtown hotel and paid cash, feeling ridiculous until I remembered the vials that had moved in my room.

I lay awake staring at the ceiling, replaying everything: Caleb’s question about where I kept insulin. Caleb watching me inject. Caleb “concerned” in the lawyer’s office. Caleb’s eyes on his phone while my body failed.

The next morning, I called Columbus Police non-emergency and asked—my voice shaking—to speak with someone about a suspected attempt to cause harm through medication tampering.

Detective Marcus Reed met me at the precinct. Twenty-one years on the job. The kind of man who’d seen betrayal so often it no longer surprised him, only disappointed him.

He listened. He took notes. He didn’t interrupt.

When I finished, he set down his pen.

“Do you still have access to your father’s home?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I have a key.”

“Don’t go back there alone,” Reed said. “If your medication was tampered with, this wasn’t impulsive. This is deliberate, planned. And your brother filming your emergency? That sounds like documentation for a legal strategy.”

I swallowed hard. “So I’m not crazy.”

Reed’s eyes held steady. “No,” he said. “You’re alert.”

Officer Nolan Park accompanied me back to the house late morning. Caleb’s car was gone. The house felt too quiet, like it knew we were there to peel back the wallpaper.

In the upstairs bathroom, Park filmed as he bagged the vial from the fridge.

In my bedroom, he found something that made my mouth go dry: an empty vial in the trash bin near my dresser, buried under tissues and crumpled paper.

Not one of mine.

Park bagged it with the same careful professionalism.

Then we searched Caleb’s room.

I hated that part—hated the invasion, hated what it meant. But Park moved with methodical certainty.

In Caleb’s bedside drawer, beneath estate paperwork, Park found a box of small clear vials: saline solution. The kind used for irrigation, the kind that looks innocent until you understand what it can imitate.

Two vials were missing.

Park photographed, bagged, and looked at me.

“This is significant,” he said quietly.

We were loading evidence into the cruiser when Caleb’s car pulled into the driveway.

He stepped out slowly, eyes flicking between the uniform, the evidence bags, and me.

His expression cycled through confusion, concern… then something else, something calculating—like a chess player forced to improvise.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but his gaze stayed locked on my face. “Are you okay?”

I didn’t answer.

Officer Park stepped forward. “Columbus PD,” he said. “We’re collecting evidence related to an investigation.”

Caleb’s jaw tightened. “Investigation of what?”

Park didn’t debate. He didn’t argue. He simply directed Caleb to step aside.

Caleb obeyed, but the air around him shifted. He was doing math. Fast.

That evening, Detective Reed called.

They had fast-tracked the lab work.

“The vial you were using contains mostly saline with a small percentage of insulin,” Reed said. “Enough to look normal at a glance. Not enough to be effective.”

My vision blurred—not from high blood sugar this time, but from the impact.

“The unopened vial from your suitcase is pure insulin,” Reed continued. “No tampering. The empty vial we found matches the saline vials found in your brother’s room.”

I pressed my fingers to my forehead. The room seemed to tilt.

“So he did it,” I whispered.

Reed didn’t sensationalize it. He didn’t say “attempted murder” like TV. He said the truth in law-enforcement language, the kind that feels colder because it’s real.

“We have evidence of intentional medication substitution,” he said. “Now we build the case.”

Then came the emails.

I called Thomas Whitaker and demanded copies of all correspondence between him and Caleb since Dad’s death. Whitaker’s voice stiffened until I mentioned an active police investigation. Then his tone turned crisp and careful.

He sent forty-one emails.

Most were normal probate logistics.

But six—six—were like a quiet campaign written in polite legal language.

Concerns about my competency.

Concerns about my “medical instability.”

Questions about conservatorship, oversight, safeguards.

Each email documented my supposed decline and framed Caleb as the dutiful sibling trying to “protect” me.

I could see the plan now, laid out like a blueprint.

Make me sick.

Make me look unreliable.

Film the emergencies.

Collect “proof.”

Use the court to take control.

And in the middle of it, my body—my disease—turned into a weapon.

Detective Reed brought Caleb in for questioning.

I wasn’t in the room, but Reed later told me there was a moment Caleb couldn’t talk his way out of.

Because when Reed asked why Caleb was filming my medical crisis instead of helping, Caleb paused too long.

Then he said it.

“I needed documentation,” Caleb admitted, voice flat, like he was talking about receipts. “For the estate. To show he wasn’t capable of managing his portion.”

Reed let the silence hang, heavy and undeniable.

Documentation.

Not concern.

Not love.

A record.

Four days later, charges were filed.

And then, like the universe decided to expose every hidden corner at once, the digital forensics came back.

Search history: insulin tampering. Estate competency laws. Conservatorship procedures. How to induce a crisis that looks “natural.” How long sustained high blood sugar can damage the body.

Text messages with his girlfriend—Rebecca Dalton, medical billing—talking about my diabetes like it was a loophole.

“If he can’t manage his health, how can he manage millions?”

In black and white.

No dramatic confession needed.

Just the ugly logic of greed typed into a screen.

The preliminary hearing happened in a courthouse that smelled like old paper and winter coats. The prosecutor, Maline Pierce, presented evidence like a slow, steady drumbeat.

Lab results. Chain of custody. Saline vials. Emails. Search history. Texts. My medical logs. Dr. Grant’s report stating, professionally and plainly, that without intervention I could have progressed into severe complications.

Caleb’s attorney tried to frame it as misunderstandings, concern, out-of-context texts.

The judge didn’t buy it.

Bail was set high enough that Caleb couldn’t walk out.

And suddenly the estate—the $4.8 million that started all of this—was paused, placed under neutral administration while the criminal case moved forward.

It should have felt like victory.

Instead, it felt like grief all over again.

Because I hadn’t come to Columbus to win.

I’d come because my father died, and I thought my brother and I would stand in the wreckage and be human together.

I learned, too late, that Caleb didn’t see wreckage.

He saw opportunity.

The trial came months later.

I sat on the stand under fluorescent lights while strangers stared at me like my blood could be weighed in dollars. Dr. Grant testified. The forensic chemist testified. Detective Reed testified. The digital forensics specialist testified.

Then Rebecca Dalton testified as part of a deal, describing Caleb’s planning with the casualness of someone who hadn’t understood she was lighting a fuse.

When it was over, the jury didn’t take long.

Guilty.

The sentencing was quiet, which somehow made it worse. The judge spoke directly to Caleb about trust, betrayal, calculation, harm. About seeing a human life as an obstacle.

When Caleb was led away, he looked back once—not with remorse, not with apology, but with the stunned disbelief of a man who thought he was smarter than consequence.

Afterward, when the estate resumed, the law did what Dad’s will intended—only now, Caleb was disqualified from inheriting.

Everything transferred to me.

The full estate.

All of it.

And I stood in Whitaker’s office holding a pen, staring at signatures that felt like ash.

Because money is supposed to feel like security.

But after you’ve watched your own brother turn your medicine into a tool, money feels like a stain.

I sold the house.

I kept only a few properties with stable tenants and put the rest into managed accounts with people who’d never met my family, never laughed at our childhood stories, never stood in a doorway filming.

I moved back to Michigan.

I went back to my classroom.

And I tried to become ordinary again—because ordinary is what I wanted all along.

But the body remembers.

I still inspect every vial before I inject. I store medication like it’s a passport. I check numbers more often than I need to, because part of my brain is still waiting for the moment reality tips and I realize I’ve been fooled again.

I started therapy. Trauma specialists have words for what happens when betrayal comes from someone you’re wired to trust. They call it betrayal trauma, like a label can make it less sharp.

Some nights I sleep fine.

Other nights I wake up tasting that hospital-air dryness, hearing the beep of a monitor, seeing a phone screen in a doorway.

I visited Caleb once in prison, because curiosity is its own kind of hunger.

He looked smaller behind glass, the confidence drained out of him by routine and locked doors.

“Why?” I asked.

He swallowed. “I convinced myself you didn’t deserve it,” he said. “You were gone. I was here. I did the work. It felt unfair.”

“And that made this okay?”

He shook his head slowly, eyes wet. “No,” he whispered. “Nothing makes it okay.”

I didn’t yell. I didn’t lecture. I didn’t give him an ending that would make a movie audience clap.

I just hung up the phone and left.

Because some stories don’t end with forgiveness.

Some stories end with distance.

Now, when I teach my students about chemical bonds—how molecules hold together, how tiny forces create stability—I sometimes think about the opposite. About what happens when the bond is broken by intention.

And I take that inheritance money—the money that almost cost me my life—and I push parts of it into something that can’t be twisted: diabetes education programs, medical research, scholarships for kids who manage chronic illness while trying to build a future.

If money has to exist in my life, it doesn’t get to exist as a reward for betrayal.

It has to become something else.

Four years later, I still have the exact time burned into my memory: 2:47 a.m.

Not because it’s dramatic.

Because that was the moment I learned what Caleb really was.

Not my brother.

Not my partner in grief.

A man who stood in a doorway and filmed, steady-handed, while my body fought to stay upright.

And the truth is, I don’t carry that story to be pitied.

I carry it because people like Caleb count on silence.

They count on you being embarrassed. They count on you wanting to keep it “in the family.” They count on you doubting yourself until you stop asking questions.

I asked.

I checked.

I changed one vial.

And that one small decision—buying fresh insulin at a 24-hour pharmacy off an Ohio highway—saved my life.

The paramedic’s questions kept coming, calm and practiced, like he was reading from a script he’d memorized a thousand times.

“Any new medications?”
“No.”
“Any recent illness?”
“No.”
“Any chance you missed a dose?”
“No.”

I could hear the word no in my own voice and hate it, because it sounded defensive. Like I was already on trial in my own father’s house.

The lead medic leaned closer, checking the IV line. “We’re taking you in,” he said. “Stay with me. Keep breathing.”

Behind him, Caleb shifted his weight in the doorway, still filming. The screen glow lit his face from below, turning his features into something sharp and unfamiliar. Not a brother. Not family. Just a witness collecting footage.

“Sir,” the paramedic said again, louder this time, “who called 911?”

Caleb’s eyes flicked up for half a second. “I did,” he said, and his tone had that smooth, helpful finish—like he wanted credit.

I tried to speak, but my tongue felt slow. My chest felt tight. Everything inside me buzzed like a power line.

The medic glanced at Caleb’s phone, then back at me. Something in his expression changed—barely—but I saw it. A professional’s instinct. The moment he decided this scene wasn’t just medical.

The ambulance ride blurred into ceiling lights and clipped voices. I remember the cold sting of antiseptic, the strap of the blood pressure cuff, the beep that refused to become background noise. I remember the medic telling me, “You’re doing the right thing. Keep answering.”

And I remember Caleb climbing into his SUV behind the ambulance like it was a routine errand.

At the ER, Columbus nights are never quiet. Sirens in the distance, automatic doors sighing open and closed, someone crying softly behind a curtain. A nurse asked for my name, my date of birth, my insurance. The most American kind of panic: nearly dying while still being asked to verify your address.

They stabilized me. They kept me overnight. They ran tests. They asked what I’d eaten, what I’d taken, what I’d felt.

I told them the truth: I had taken my insulin. I had done everything right. I had been getting sicker for weeks in a way that didn’t make sense.

Caleb hovered at the edge of it all, wearing concern like a tailored jacket.

“Stress can do awful things,” he told a nurse, shaking his head. “Dad’s death hit him hard.”

He said him the way people say patient, as if I wasn’t three feet away.

When they discharged me, I didn’t go back to Dad’s house. Not immediately. My body was exhausted, but my mind was bright and razor-edged, the way it gets when survival has just nudged you by the shoulder and whispered, Pay attention.

I sat in the hospital parking lot under a sodium streetlight, watching my breath fog the windshield, and I replayed the doorway scene in my head.

Caleb filming.

Not helping.

Filming.

If he’d been scared, he would’ve reached for me. If he’d been frantic, he would’ve shouted. If he’d been normal, he would’ve looked like a man watching his brother collapse.

But he’d looked… composed.

Like he was collecting a story.

Seven weeks earlier, the story began with a phone call that turned my stomach into water.

Dad was gone.

Sixty-five. Heart. Sudden. “He didn’t feel well,” they said. “He sat down.” “It was fast.”

People say fast like it’s mercy. Fast still leaves you standing in your kitchen staring at nothing, trying to understand how a human can be there and then not.

My father had built his life around work—commercial properties, leases, renovations, handshake deals that turned into clean numbers on paper. He loved predictability. Loved order. Loved control.

So of course his will was clean.

Fifty-fifty.

Me and Caleb.

Except Caleb had been at Dad’s side for nine years, co-managing the portfolio, attending meetings, signing things, shaking hands with people who called him partner. I’d been three states away, teaching stoichiometry to kids who thought chemistry was punishment. I visited on holidays. I called when I could. I showed up in the way life allowed.

Caleb showed up in the way money rewards.

By the time I drove down to Columbus, he’d already moved into Dad’s house like it was his.

“I’m just keeping things running,” he said, meeting me at the door with a tight hug that didn’t reach his eyes. “You know how Dad was. Everything’s in files. Everything’s labeled. But probate takes time.”

The house smelled like old coffee and winter dust and the faint aftershave Dad used for thirty years. Every room was a memory dressed in beige.

Caleb had taken the master bedroom.

I didn’t argue. I took my old room and told myself grief makes people weird.

I told myself a lot of things back then.

Within days, my body started slipping.

At first it was subtle. A thirst that didn’t match what I’d eaten. Waking up at night feeling dry. A headache that sat behind my eyes like pressure. Then the numbers climbed. Then they stayed there.

I tried to blame the funeral food. The disrupted sleep. The fact that Dad’s house had a different rhythm than mine. I tried to blame my own sadness.

But sadness doesn’t make your body ignore medication it has depended on for a decade.

Caleb watched me struggle like he was learning the shape of it.

“Do you want me to grab you water?” he’d ask, already halfway to the fridge.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he’d ask, leaning in like a man who wanted to help.

He asked about my readings too often. He asked about my insulin too casually. He asked where I stored it like he was asking where I kept the extra batteries.

I should’ve been louder. I should’ve asked him why he was asking.

Instead, I tried to keep the peace, because that’s what families train you to do. Smile. Shrug. Minimize. Don’t make it a thing.

Then came Thomas Whitaker, the estate attorney, and the first official meeting.

Whitaker’s office was all dark wood and legal calm, the kind of place where people talk softly about money like it’s a religion. I sat at the table, trying to be steady, trying not to look like a man falling apart.

But my body was betraying me in small humiliations—blurred vision, fatigue, repeated trips to the restroom.

Caleb sat across from me, composed, hands folded, the picture of stability.

“Maybe we should reschedule,” he suggested gently, like he was protecting me.

Whitaker agreed.

And I walked out feeling like I’d been reduced from heir to problem.

That night I did what scared people do: I tried to fix it alone.

I adjusted my dose without calling my doctor, chasing normal the way you chase a runaway car in a parking lot—hoping you can grab it before it’s gone.

The numbers didn’t just stay high. They got worse.

When I finally went to Dr. Allison Grant, she studied my logs like they were a puzzle with missing pieces.

“This doesn’t make sense,” she said.

And when a medical professional says that, you feel two things at once: relief that you’re not imagining it, and terror that the explanation might be something you don’t want.

She asked me to bring my insulin vials.

That night I lined them up on my dresser and felt, for the first time, like my bedroom wasn’t fully mine.

I went downstairs. Caleb was in the kitchen, phone in hand, the glow reflecting in his eyes.

“You’re stressed,” he said softly. “I hate seeing you like this.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Let me know if I can do anything,” he said. “We’re in this together.”

Then I went upstairs and found one vial moved by an inch.

An inch is nothing.

An inch is everything.

And that’s when my brain finally stopped bargaining.

I bought fresh insulin at a 24-hour pharmacy because it was the only way to get an answer without accusing my own brother out loud.

And the next morning, when the number on my meter landed in normal range like it had been waiting there all along, I didn’t feel victory.

I felt something colder.

Certainty.

Because if the pharmacy vial worked and the house vial didn’t, then my body wasn’t failing.

Someone had made it fail.

And I knew exactly who had the access, the motive, and the calm enough hands to stand in a doorway at 2:47 a.m. and film while I hit the floor.