Jane wrote elsewhere:

As for Ray's brother...we never hear about him other than as a child. I'm in the camp that believes the brother died. Measles, a simple case of chicken pox goes fatal, bee sting allergy, a drunk driver careening down Octavia St. during a game of street football, unlatched second-story windows, pneumonia, leukemia, an unattended bottle of drain cleaner...too many ways for a sibling to wind up in the Holy Innocents section of the All Souls Cemetery.

So, naturally, I had to do something.

Title: The Short, Sad Life of What’s-his-name Vecchio

Author: AJ Dannehl

Rating: PG

Warning: Death Fic. Definitely a death fic.

Disclaimer: Everyone knows who they legally belong to, but as a professor of mine once said, “Just ‘cause it’s legal don’t mean it’s right.” Who am I to argue with that?

*****

*

The Short, Sad Life of What’s-his-name Vecchio

***

It was a beautiful day in the neighborhood and a beautiful day to be neighbors on Octavia Avenue.

Children, by the dozens if not hundreds, ran in and out and around and between the old Victorian houses. This was especially true of one house, 2926 North Octavia, where the Vecchio family lived.

In the kitchen, Ma Vecchio was busily putting the finishing touches on yet another pan of polenta. In the living room, Maria Vecchio was entertaining her little sister, Frannie, by playing Barbies with her. Barbie was Wedding Day Barbie in full lacy wedding regalia and Ken was dark haired and wearing only boxer shorts. Outside, Ray Vecchio was playing touch football with his friends Frankie and Marco and their teams. Everyone was happy (especially Pop Vecchio, who was at Fanelli’s and so missing out on all this).

Everyone except the occupant of one of the upstairs bedrooms.

Little is known of this child except the fact that he was a boy and a brother to the three Vecchio siblings. We don’t know if he was the elder or the younger brother. We don’t know if he liked his pizza Chicago style or Pizza Hut. We don’t know squat about this kid, except that at one time in TV history, he existed. In the interest of brevity, I’ll christen this poor soul Unknown Brother, or UB.

Poor little - or big - UB was confined to his bedroom, suffering from an awful combination of chicken pox, measles, mumps and rubella (Ma, with all those kids, a drunken gambler husband and pans and pans of polenta always on the stove sorta screwed a bit up on those mandatory vaccinations). UB leaned against the bedroom window, one hand pressing against the poorly-secured screen, the other clutching a half-finished can of Draino in the other. (Draino, Dr. Pepper. . . it's so easy to confuse the two, especially when one's eyes are swollen shut because of a bee sting). The fumes from the can were making UB dizzy, so he leaned even more heavily against the screen and fell out.

Amazingly, UB survived the fall, only to roll into the street and through the now-heated football game. The score between Frankie's Terminators and Marco's Marauders was tied at 7-7. Not bad at all, considering that, for reasons that we need not go into at this time, the kids were using a shabby, over-inflated stuffed otter instead of the regulation pigskin ball. Frankie rifled off what would have been a perfect pass to his receiver, Ray, only to have the ball intercepted by an ambulance rushing down Octavia Street.

Inside the ambulance was little Esther. She so wanted the crown and title of “Ice Maiden” at the local beau - excuse me, scholarship - pageant sponsored by the Sixth Our Lady of Immaculate Conception Church. She had practiced and practiced and practiced, with the result that the poor child was suffering from hypothermia-induced pneumonia due to too-long submersion in freezing water. So she was being rushed to Chicago Hope. Or County Hospital. Or maybe St. Elsewhere. All TV hospitals tend to look alike in re-runs.

The EMT driving the ambulance already had enough troubles. Stricken with leukemia, he was sick as a dog from his last round of chemo. His Mr. Coffee was broken, so he hadn't had his usual three cups of coffee that morning before work, so the kid's wheezy breathing was really beginning to annoy him big time. So getting whapped upside the head (air conditioner in the ambulance wasn't working, either) with a furball sent his jangled nerves into overdrive, causing him to jerk on the wheel and send the ambulance careening drunkenly into younger or older or whatever UB.

:::pause for tissue break:::

The street football game ended in a victory for Frankie's team. The ref, Charlie, called pass interference, hit the Marauders with a 50 yard penalty and so set the Terminators up for a touchdown and an extra-point kick. This made Frankie so cocky that he kept screeching at Marco "In yo' face, sucka!", a habit that got so annoying that Marco moved away and Ray later became a cop with a deep desire to enforce neighborhood nuisance laws.

Little Esther recovered her health and grew up to become a medical examiner for the CPD. Swearing off her childhood beauty queen ambitions, she later had a sex change, endured extensive cosmetic surgery and changed her (his?) name to Mort.

Sadly, neither UB nor the otter survived.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

Or herstory, since I swiped this from Jane in the first place.

The end.

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