The tears that started when my mom told me what was going on hadn’t stopped until now. I wasn’t sure if I was angry or devastated. I wanted to punch something.
I wanted to climb on top of the hill and scream and scream and scream until my body couldn’t take it anymore, because this… This wasn’t fair.
It wasn’t fucking fair, and I was helpless. I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t suddenly cure her or give her hope. I didn’t have to be a doctor to understand that terminal meant the end. I just never imagined I would ever have to face something like this.
I never imagined that the girl I loved would be going through something like this.
God, and here I was, sitting inside my car, while she lay hidden behind the walls of this hospital, probably scared, and I was paralyzed to get up and go to her. I wanted to be strong, but every single step I took, every mile I passed while driving here, every heartbeat, felt like a ticking time bomb. It was the time that we didn’t have.
Mom didn’t have enough information to answer all my questions, and I dreaded hearing those answers from Sophie. I dreaded hearing how much time we had left.
Life wasn’t supposed to be lived like this, waiting for that expiration date to come. I knew it was ridiculous thinking like this because all of us lived and all of us died, but not all of us had to think about dying at the age of eighteen when we were just starting our life.
Not all of us had to think about the life that could’ve been if the disease hadn’t come knocking at our door.
Not all of us had to imagine what her funeral would look like, and what color her casket would be.
I wasn’t supposed to be sitting in front of the hospital, trembling from fear, because I didn’t want to break in front of her. I was supposed to be knocking on the door of her house to beg her to forgive me. I was supposed to hug her and kiss her and show her how good the two of us would be.
This, all of this, just felt wrong.
I dragged my hand over my face and killed the engine, sitting in complete silence, gathering the courage I needed to go inside. My palm was wet from the tears, and when I looked at myself in the rearview mirror, my bloodshot eyes stared back at me, shining with anguish. I bent down to pick up the flower bouquet I bought as a knock sounded from my left side.
I turned around, holding the bouquet of sunflowers in my right hand. My eyes collided with Andrew’s. Sophie’s brother looked like he walked through hell and back as he stood there in the pouring rain.
Water dripped from the ends of his hair, the color a couple of shades darker, drenched from rain, and the pair of hollow eyes and his hollow soul seared through my own.
He knew why I was here. With a nod, he took a small step back, allowing me to open the door.
A gust of cold air enveloped me into its hug as soon as I stepped out, and I decided to leave the sunflowers inside, careful not to get them touched by rain. I had no idea how the florist even had them. As soon as I saw them, something squeezed around my heart, a melody so long forgotten, a childish laughter and the visual of Sophie running through the field of sunflowers located close to Alkey Lake, and I knew I had to get them.
“Andy,” I croaked, letting the rain fall over me.
Silence greeted me as he stood there with his hands on his hips, just looking at me, as if he was measuring me. In a way, I guess he was, and I would too if I were in his position. I wasn’t here to cause trouble, and the knowing look passed over his face.
His hug came out of nowhere, and I welcomed it with open arms, wrapping myself around his larger frame, grabbing a fistful of his wet shirt in my hands. I had no idea which one of us trembled, or which one of us cried, but we both shook with the unspoken words and the pain connecting us.
Andrew was the first one to pull back, shaking the rain from his hair, before I asked, “Is she inside?”
My voice didn’t sound like my own, and this was exactly why I took my time to get here. I had to calm myself down. I didn’t trust myself enough to walk in there and see her in the hospital bed, where she should’ve never been in the first place.
Andrew was just three years older than Sophie and me, but looking at him now, standing here like two idiots while rain pelted all over us, he seemed like he had aged ten years overnight. His eyes were tired, lines marring the soft skin around them, and the dark circles he usually didn’t have threw a sharp contrast to his pale skin.
It wasn’t so much about what he looked like right now, but what his eyes were telling me. Hollowness, pain, it was suffocating him. For a moment there, when my mom told me what was going on with Sophie, I only thought about myself and what I felt.
I thought about everything we would never be able to do, but I never, not once, thought about her family—about Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, or Andrew.
The problem with sickness was that it was never only one person that was affected. Families, friends, all those people that loved you, they all suffered together with you.
Andrew didn’t speak. I had a feeling that he didn’t trust himself any more than I trusted myself. With a somber nod, he indicated toward the hospital and started walking before I could ask another question.
The darkened sky cried as we walked toward the entrance, and the need to both run and stay was waging war inside of me. Fear like no other gripped my insides, sending my stomach into a turmoil. The strong smell of chemicals slammed into me as soon as we stepped through the sliding door, and seeing the doctors and nurses running all over the place froze me to the spot.
My eyes were stuck on a little boy, no older than ten, sitting next to an elderly woman in one of the chairs close to the reception. Tired eyes and a crooked smile were there while she talked to him, but there was no shine in either one of those.
His hair was shaven, or maybe it fell out, and the urge to run away started prevailing while this kid, much younger than me, turned around and looked at me.
God.
