My intention was not to clean the dried up blood off the floor, sink, and stool when I walked into the upstairs bathroom. It had already stained the counter when I got back from getting frozen yogurt with my parents. My grandma broke the silence in my house by handing me a roll of paper towels. I looked around, paper towels in hand, and although my grandparents were downstairs, I still had no one but myself to help assuage my fear of blood. The blood blanketed the counter and dripped into the sink. I had felt as if I was in a horror movie. At thirteen years old, I forced my frightened, nauseated self to clean up the puddles.

George Bailey bit my sister, Rachel, forming craters in her lips and cheeks. I was lying against the side of the house feeling guilty and horrified. I was the one who begged my parents pathetically to take me to Strawberry Field’s for coffee frozen yogurt and cookie dough toppings. From then on I would live with the consequences. While Rachel was rushed out of my house with gauze pads from cheek to cheek, holding back the blood, she mouthed to me, “I’ll be okay.”

“I won’t be,” I thought to myself.

My tears continued as I watched the flashing lights vanish down the street from the ambulance that carried my heartbroken sister away. I walked inside after hearing Bailey cry in the backyard. Somehow I found a way to do my homework and although I knew I didn’t have to at a time like this, I did all of it. I slept over at my friend’s house that night so that I would not be home when my sister returned and despite my mother’s suggestion to stay home, I even went to school the next morning.

At 9:30 am I called my mom to come get me. I wasn’t able to make it through the day after all. I got home and rested on the arm of my living room sofa, fidgeting with a glass ornament, and waiting for Rachel to wake up. I finally sauntered up to her bedroom door and saw her standing under the doorframe with her new scars and fifty stitches holding her smile together. The pain I felt as I cried into her shoulder was the worst pain I had ever experienced. Why had I ever resented her?

My sister was a straight A student, caring, polite, easygoing, and had blonde hair: everything you could ever ask for. I have always looked up to her. On the other hand, Rachel was shy, vulnerable, and sometimes irresponsible which I resented because for as long as I can remember, I have played the “big sister” role. I have been the one telling Rachel to look both ways when she crosses the street and giving her advice on making decisions that won’t upset our parents. I sometimes became frustrated and wondered why my sister couldn’t act a certain way for me; after all, I was the baby of our family. She was always treated differently: better. Up until the incident, I expressed my resentment as anger and the day she was injured, I was no longer frustrated. All I could think about was helping my sister but somehow I couldn’t find a role to play. I was trapped in a “little sister” mentality and wanted nothing more than to be comforted. I learned how important it is to have an older sister to look up to, but also it is equally important to possess these qualities for times when the other can’t.

After my sister was injured, I stopped letting my perception get in the way of our relationship. When we were younger we fought more than the girls on Gossip Girl. The second my family got the frantic phone call from Rachel on our way home, the fighting reduced by ninety percent. We said goodbye to Bailey two weeks after he bit my sister. From that point on, my sister and I bonded more than we ever had. I had a spot to fill since Rachel’s best friend was taken away. I sometimes regret that it a took a tragedy to make me see the bigger picture. While the stitches and plastic surgery healed my sister’s face, my sister and my family will not fully recover from the loss of our dog. Our hearts were broken as we watched him drive away with his new family—one without children. Yet, our family, especially my sister and I, gained so much more than we had lost that December.