DECISIONS AND CONSEQUENCES 1

Decisions and Consequences

Juan A. Constante

Universidad del Atlántico

Essay & Critics

Jose Barros

November 30th, 2020

 DECISIONS AND CONSEQUENCES 2

The day was normal and ordinary. I, a boy of 11 years quiet, but at the same time

distracted and put in my books and homework; I saw my father talking on the cell phone and

mentioning the name of my brother something, strange for me. Suddenly, that monotony broke

with my mom talking about a trip in a few weeks to Bogotá, something that caught my attention

seriously the first time I traveled to another city, but why? Although Bogotá was a city that was

mentioned by my parents in previous days.

Before I knew it, the days went by, it was a vacation, and there was still the idea of the

trip, but this time my parents talking agreed that only my mother and I would go, since my

father, for health reasons, could not. I wanted to ask why only my mother and I would go, but my

father evaded me by asking me if I had spoken to my brother Henry, to which my mother

beckoned as if she wanted my father to cut the conversation.

For monetary reasons, the trip would be by bus already at the station with a farewell

somewhat bitter and full of uncertainty for this trip. I remembered what my father had asked me

to avoid and. I told my mother because we were making that trip to what she revealed to me

something that for me was unexpected; this was not going to be a vacation trip; it was to track

down my brother, who had left town with the woman who was his partner, without a word to

anyone. Until that time, I thought I was in the city, but he lived further away, and it was almost

time to reach our destination.

The welcome to the city was a cooled climate but, without becoming like the

exaggerations with which Bogota was exalted, we went to any hotel to stay in immediately the

same day we went with my mom’s contact to find my brother. It was not until the second day

that we finally found the place where he was sleeping in the parking lot of a hospital inside an

ambulance because he worked as an orderly; his wife left him and with her their daughter. He
 DECISIONS AND CONSEQUENCES 3

was being helped by another woman to hardly be able to survive in a city that he came to on

impulse, and the only thing I perceived in that ambulance was mixed feelings.

At the end of it all, my brother come clean about everything he did and how sorry he was

about the decisions that led him to where he was. Our mother understood that it was all his fault.

But at the same time, she kept reminding him that he has your full support. He also spoke to me

and told me a phrase that I frame despite my age live is not only based on saying that you will

but demonstrate it with acts but acts that are guided by our head and intelligence.