Let Me Tell You

I have a story to tell you. Sadly it is not a funny story. It's about my cousin. He's older than I am, by about 15 years and lives in a nicer part of Minneapolis. [if such a place exists] Apparently his speech was getting a bit slurry and so he went to the doctor and got an MRI. The doctor said he might have a bit of carbon monoxide poisoning and should have his furnace checked out. To have his furnace checked out without receiving any further carbon monoxide he decided to check into a hotel for a few days. On his first day there he went out with a friend. And then later that night someone assaulted him in the streets and he is now in the hospital. To make things even better he has brain swelling. And the doctors think that he is going to die. Because he is mostly unresponsive. But when the doctors said that they thought that he wasn't going to make it he raised his hand, giving all of us the tiniest glimmer of hope. They caught the guy who beat my cousin like the next day. There were witnesses and it was caught on camera. But the saddest part is that my cousin is one of the nicest people on the planet. I don't see what he could have done to provoke such a response from anyone. He will sometimes invite his friends to our family Christmas, because they will be in town and have no where else to go. We do Santa bags [everyone buys something somewhat cheap for everyone and puts in bag without saying who is from] and since none of the rest of us know his friend is coming, they wouldn't get any presents. So he buys them at least 3 or 4 presents every time, to accompany the few presents from the people who knew that they would be there. And if I am sitting at the same table as him during dinner he will try to include me in the conversation while the rest might ignore me. [just because they are all older than me or because the younger kids are there and they are so much more interesting or my other cousins are there, the ones who are like actually related] I don't know. I just don't understand.