Sable Monroe

The Dog, the Women, and the Circus

When my younger brother nearly died from COVID-19, I thought the worst part of our family crisis would be his hospitalization.

I was wrong.

While he was fighting to recover, the women in his life were fighting among themselves, his housing situation was becoming complicated, and one unfortunate dog was about to pay the ultimate price.

At this point, I wasn’t sure whether I was following a medical emergency or the plot of a particularly ridiculous soap opera.

The only thing missing was dramatic music.

Actually, given my family, somebody probably would have argued over who got to choose the soundtrack.

A COVID Family Crisis With Too Many Moving Parts

To appreciate the circus, you first need to understand the cast.

My brother was married, although he and his wife were estranged.

He also had children with other women, including the mother of his oldest child, whom he had designated as his medical power of attorney.

That decision had already created tension during his hospitalization.

My mother, naturally, had inserted herself into the situation and expected me to help resolve matters over which I had no legal authority.

Meanwhile, my brother was still seriously ill.

You would think that might encourage everyone to concentrate on his recovery.

But no.

There were other matters demanding attention.

Including the dogs.

The Dog Attack Nobody Needed

While my brother was hospitalized, the mother of his oldest child was helping care for his dogs.

One of them was a pit bull.

And somewhere in the middle of an already chaotic situation, that dog bit her calf.

Not exactly the thank-you she was expecting for looking after somebody else’s animals.

The bite was serious enough that the dog was subsequently euthanized.

Now, I understand that dogs can be unpredictable, especially when their routines have been disrupted and their owners are absent.

But this was a terrible outcome for everyone involved.

The woman was injured.

The dog was dead.

And my brother, who was already facing a life-threatening illness, had one more disaster waiting for him outside the hospital.

His wife took possession of the other dog.

At least one animal made it out of the family drama alive.

I wish I could say the humans were handling things with equal restraint.

When the Women Started Fighting Over COVID

Remember the mother of my brother’s middle child?

The one whose cruise had been part of the chain of events preceding his COVID infection?

Well, the mother of his oldest child was not particularly pleased with her.

She blamed her for my brother contracting the virus.

And given how close he had come to dying, emotions were understandably running high.

But rather than keeping the dispute between the people directly involved, she reportedly contacted the other woman’s parents.

Why?

Because those parents happened to own the apartment complex where my brother lived.

Yes.

His personal relationships and his housing arrangements were now colliding.

I couldn’t have invented a more inconvenient family arrangement if I’d tried.

Imagine nearly dying of COVID, only to discover that your romantic history has somehow become a landlord-tenant issue.

At this point, everybody seemed to have a grievance, and everybody appeared to know somebody who could make somebody else’s life difficult.

It was less a family support system than an interconnected network of potential retaliation.

And my brother still had to come home to all of it.

Leaving the Hospital Against Medical Advice

Then came another development.

My brother left the hospital against medical advice.

After everything he had been through, he reportedly became convinced that hospital staff might harm him.

I wasn’t there to witness what led him to that conclusion, so I can’t tell you exactly what he was thinking.

What I can tell you is that leaving the hospital against medical advice after such a serious illness frightened me.

This was a man whose organs had been failing.

His recovery was not something I considered a casual undertaking.

Nevertheless, he left.

And the mother of his oldest child picked him up.

The same woman who had been managing responsibilities while he was hospitalized.

The same woman who had been bitten by his dog.

The same woman who had become embroiled in a dispute involving the grandparents of another of his children.

You couldn’t accuse her of having an uneventful week.

The Housing Dispute and the Romantic Reversal

Once my brother was out of the hospital, he had another concern.

His housing.

Apparently, the statements made to the parents who owned his apartment complex had created a problem he wanted resolved.

He pressured the mother of his oldest child to retract what she had said.

I could understand why he was concerned about keeping a roof over his head, especially after surviving a medical emergency.

But the entire situation struck me as another example of how his personal relationships had become tangled together.

The woman who had been entrusted with making medical decisions for him was now being asked to help clean up a housing dispute.

And then, because the circus apparently had room for one more act, my brother ended their relationship.

He reconciled with his wife.

Yes, the wife from whom he had been estranged.

The same wife who had been part of the earlier medical power of attorney controversy.

After everything that had happened, the romantic lineup changed again.

I suppose surviving a near-death experience can inspire a person to reevaluate their relationships.

In my brother’s case, it appeared to involve a substantial amount of rearranging.

I wasn’t interested in keeping score.

Frankly, I was exhausted just trying to understand who was speaking to whom.

What My Brother’s COVID Recovery Revealed About Our Family

When I look back on that period, what stands out isn’t simply the number of people involved.

It’s how quickly one person’s medical crisis exposed the instability surrounding him.

A dispute over medical power of attorney.

An estranged marriage.

Multiple co-parenting relationships.

A dog attack.

A housing dispute involving the parents of one of his children.

A departure from the hospital against medical advice.

And finally, a romantic reconciliation.

All while my brother was recovering from an illness that had nearly killed him.

I wanted him to survive.

That never changed.

But I was beginning to see that survival and stability were two very different things.

The medical crisis had brought everyone together, at least in the sense that everyone was now involved in everyone else’s business.

It hadn’t necessarily brought anyone closer.

And it certainly hadn’t made the underlying family dysfunction disappear.

For years, I had believed certain things about my younger brother.

I believed I understood the kind of man he had become.

I believed some of the violence and dysfunction we’d grown up around had remained in our childhood.

I was about to discover how mistaken I might have been.

Because the most disturbing revelation wasn’t about the dogs, the women, or the apartment.

It was about what his wife would eventually tell me.

And unlike the rest of this circus, I didn’t find that part remotely funny.

This is Part Three of Family Secrets, COVID Exposed, a four-part personal memoir series by Sable Monroe.

Previously: Who Gets to Decide If You Live?, published October 17, 2026.

Next: What COVID Exposed, publishing October 22, 2026. My brother survived COVID, but what I learned afterward permanently changed our relationship.