“Sophie, we can do something. I’m sure we can.” The grip on my hand increased. “We need to—”
“No, Mom.” I looked at her, hating the hope in her eyes. Hating it because I would have to shatter it now. “I’m not doing any of those treatments.”
“Sophie!” my dad thundered. “You can’t just—”
“Give up?” I smiled. “I’m not giving up, but I also don’t want to spend the rest of my time in a hospital bed. I want to run next to the lake. I want to go out and kiss the boy I liked. I want to see you guys at breakfast in the morning, and I want us to spend as much time as possible together. I don’t want to be hooked on machines that can’t do anything for me. I don’t want to hope when it leads to nothing but more misery all of us are going to feel.”
“Bubba.” His lower lip wobbled. “We can still have all those things.”
“We can’t if I end up being paralyzed for the rest of my days when that brain operation goes wrong. We also can’t if I keep vomiting fifteen times a day, unable to hold anything down. You know what this is, Dad. You know how it ends.”
Silence greeted me, all three of them looking either at me or at the floor. I could almost see the arguments forming inside their heads, but I wasn’t budging.
“I’m an adult,” I argued. “I can make my own decisions, and this is the one I’m making now.”
“Please, baby,” Mom cried, pleading at me with her eyes. “We need to try.”
“No, Mom.” I placed my hand on top of hers. “We don’t. I want to be remembered for looking like this.” I pointed at myself. “With my hair, with my smile, and wickedly good at chess.”
The first tear rolled down my father’s cheek, followed by another one, until they all fell freely. He wasn’t holding them anymore. He wasn’t holding himself anymore.
From the moment they diagnosed me with cancer, he started pulling away. I didn’t think that he did it consciously, but rather to protect himself in a way. I also knew that he tried to hide his tears from me, but now, as we all faced a dark future, he let it all go.
Now in the end, he finally understood.
Maybe I couldn’t understand death back then, but I understood now.
My mom laid her head on my shoulder, her body rocking with silent sobs, stroking my hand with hers and murmuring soft, calming words to herself.
They couldn’t accept it; I could see that. But back there between the ice and air, between past and future, between good and bad, I knew what was coming. I think I knew for a while, I just didn’t want to believe that something like this could happen to my family.
I didn’t think that something like this happened to young people like me, but death wasn’t picky. Death and sickness did not have an age limit. They just took and took, and what was worse, they weren’t only taking away lives.
They tore families apart. They left wounds that never healed.
They shrouded our lives in darkness, covered us with a veil of pain, laughing at the sorrow flowing through our veins.
“It’s gonna be okay, Mom,” I murmured and tapped her hand with my own. “Everything is going to be okay.”
“Oh God. I’m supposed to be consoling you, not the other way around.”
Dad took a step back and pulled one of the chairs from the back, settling himself behind us. One of his arms landed on me, hugging me from behind, while the other one wrapped around Mom. The two of them shook, cried, and cursed, while I sat there as still as a statue, unable to put these emotions into words.
“I’m going to—” Doctor Mathias started talking when the door burst open, revealing Andy with two coffee cups in his hands.
His eyes landed on us, then on Doctor Mathias, then back on us. I knew that even if I left this world and never remembered who I used to be, I would remember the look on his face.
“No.” He shook his head. “No, no, no.” He entered the office and dropped the cups on top of the desk and came right to me. “Please tell me it isn’t what I think it is.”
Fear, as palpable as my pulse, was all around us—hollow sadness, broken souls, and an eternity of broken dreams.
“I’m sorry, Andy,” I said as he dropped to his knees on my right side.
“How long?” Anger laced his words, but I knew it wasn’t aimed at me. Just like my anger wasn’t aimed at my doctors or at my family, but it was still there.
It was the worst kind of anger. The kind that came from a place deep within ourselves, that didn’t have one concrete direction. It didn’t have a person or an object you could be angry at. Instead of trying to find that one thing you could direct it at, you ended up being angry and snappy at all those people you cared about.
“Four months.” I smiled. “Maybe five.”
