There are some days in your life that are so intense they change everything. You can never remember them without shuddering. If I hadn’t gone to the gym when I did, if the receptionist hadn’t told me about Prince’s bogus visitors, if a good Samaritan hadn’t been walking by at the exact moment that I phoned my brother and heard his smashed phone rattling its last breath from the alleyway, and answered it … . If, if, if. Rubi always says my brother had angels around him. I believe her.

The rest of that day is a blur. I remember running out the gym like my heels were on fire, trying to find the right taxi that would take me to the location the Samaritan had told me, then realising I had no money in my pockets and racing there on foot with superhuman speed. I’ll never forget the sight of my brother lying there in that stinking alleyway, washing the garbage with his blood.

The blesser’s hitmen had smashed him up pretty badly. His face didn’t even look like him anymore. But it was the rest of him that the paramedics were worried about. Broken ribs, internal bleeding, punctured lung. It was touch and go whether doctors would be able to save him.

I rode with him in the ambulance to Crompton Emergency, sirens blasting the traffic out of our way. It was just like in the movies. Except the movies don’t show you how bad it feels seeing someone you love beaten up like that.

“Which Princess? I don’t know any Princess,” he kept croaking, just before the sedative knocked him. No-one but me knew what he was talking about. I felt so bad I could hardly keep on breathing. If I could have changed places with him I would have.

At the hospital they put him straight into emergency surgery. He was there for hours. Rubi sat with me in the waiting area, holding my hand and feeding me Cokes from the machine for strength. She would have got me muffins too. But for once I had no appetite.

Finally they came and told me he was out of surgery and in the High Care ward. They let me sit with him. I was all he had. Ma was away again at another funeral, in Joburg this time; they were dropping like flies in our family. She’d get back when she could.

***

Tell us: How do you think Magcina is feeling?