Hemophilia_Erin+Breslin

__** Hemophilia **__  ** FROM THE LOST JOURNALS OF ALEXEI ROMANOV ** On July 14th, 1918, my life changed forever. In fact, it almost ended. My true name is Alexei Romanov, and I am the last surviving member of the Russian royal family. Even now, the public forgets us. The tale of the murdered Russian royalty is just that. Old news. History. Nobody remembers, or even cares, about us anymore. But I care. And I remember. And this is my story.  I have hemophilia, which is a disease passed along the X-chromosome. Because my blood is lacking in a clotting factor, it doesn’t clot. The only treatments for hemophiliacs are to replace the missing clotting factor. I just bleed, and bleed, and bleed for quite a bit. If I got a large cut, or even a bruise, I could very easily die just because I couldn’t stop bleeding soon enough.  That day in July, a few horrible people kidnapped my family. They held us captive in a basement in Ekaterinburg. We huddled together in terror, fearing for our lives. We were right to be afraid. After 3 days in the basement, the rebels came down, armed with guns. They lined us up along the back wall. They shot. I can’t even begin to describe the agony of watching my beloved family fall, one by one, watching their life blood flow out onto the floor, hearing their desperate breaths as they struggled to stay alive. The coppery tang of blood was all around as they finally succumbed and passed into the void. My parents, Nicholas and Alexandra. My sisters, Olga, Tatiana, Marie. That memory will haunt me forever.  Finally, only my sister Anastasia and I were left. I had lost all hope that we would be rescued, that miraculously someone heard and stopped the bloody slaughter. I watched in fear and despair as they leveled the gun, aiming for Ana. She was so brave in the face of death, standing tall as tears streamed down her face. The man flicked the safety off. Suddenly there was a tremendous crash from above, and yelling echoed down. The man grabbed Ana and put his hand over her mouth and his gun at her head, threatening to shoot her if I yelled. I nodded to show I understood and stayed quiet as the noise continued above. I couldn’t tell who was winning, the rebels or our allies. I could tell our captor didn’t know either and it worried him. Shots rang out, making me wince with grief in the memory of my parents and siblings. We waited in silence until the noise stopped. Heavy boots plodded over to the secret door to our hiding place. The man relaxed, knowing only his friends could find the door, when it burst open with more yells. Our captor loosed a shot at my sister and she cried out as we hit the ground. Shots whizzed over our heads, glass broke, and I stiffened in fear of a fatal scratch. Suddenly, the bullets paused and I was gently pulled to my feet. Our rescuers bowed to me quickly and then we knelt by Ana. She was covered in blood, but I couldn’t see where it was coming from. My vision had doubled, caused by my hemophilia, probably triggered by the night's events. I stared, and then started babbling hysterically as they worked to save her.  I don’t know how long I sat there gibbering, waiting as dawn’s soft light started to filter in. Finally, our saviors stopped their work and beckoned me closer. I stepped forward cautiously, anxious to see my sister. Her eyelids fluttered open, and she looked confused. Abruptly, she threw a fearfully questioning gaze my way as memory flooded back. She stared at me, pleading for it to just be a bad dream, allowing her to go back to sleep and forget this nightmare. My eyes teared up as I silently shook my head no. She started to sob brokenly, and I crouched down with her. She held onto me like a drowning man to a life preserver, and I grasped her just as tightly. I let the night’s events crash down on me, and we cried together. Finally our tears dried up and our weeping came to a halt. She stood up shakily, and got my first good look at her wound. There were bandages around her torso, but spots of red leaked through. The leader of our liberators informed me that the bullet sped through her chest, but miraculously missed her heart, lungs, collarbone, //and// her major arteries. I climbed to my feet, and almost fell over again as the room swirled around me. One of the men put their hand on my shoulder to steady me, and another muttered a few curse words. I looked down and saw why. Amid dried blood, dirt, and my many bruises (another delightful effect of my hemophilia) was a very large piece of glass. That piece of glass happened to be lodged in my thigh. Then the pain hit, and I just had time to murmur a few choice words myself before the world was obscured by black.  When I woke, the first thing I felt was pain. Not unusual, as my hemophilic knees often throbbed in the morning due to the blood that leaked into them. But this pain was different. It was more of a sharp sting than the dull ache of my joints. I opened my eyes to see the world bouncing. No, that wasn’t right. //I// was bouncing. I was on a horse. I glimpsed a white bandage and looked down to see that it was trying to cover a sizeable cut but not entirely managing to staunch the slow flow of red blood. I glanced hurriedly away to my left to see my sister gazing at me worriedly. When she saw I was looking, she smiled quickly, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It couldn’t mask the hurricane of emotions I saw in her eyes. I retreated inside myself and was rushed away in my own storm of feelings. Grief, of course. Plenty of that. But I detected other sentiments, too. Guilt, for being alive when most of my family was dead. Anger at myself failing to save them. Anger at our allies’ late arrival. I delved deeper, finding one more, darker, feeling. It filled me up and hardened my heart, and I knew, that whatever happened, I would bring my family’s murderers death. [] []