“That’s fucking bullshit!”
“Andy!” Mom chastised from my left, but my eyes stayed glued to Andy.
His hair was disheveled, hours and hours of hands running through the dark strands. Lines around his eyes—lines that shouldn’t be visible on the face of a young man.
And it was all because of me.
“I’m sorry, Andy.”
I was sorry. Sorry for the pain they had to go through. Sorry for everything bad I ever did, for every foul word and every dark thought toward him. I was sorry for the life I was going to miss.
I was sorry for myself, for my plans.
I mourned the little girl that thought she could take on the world if she only believed hard enough. I mourned my childhood, my adulthood, my old age that I would never get to see. I mourned a young Sophie, the Sophie of this present and the Sophie of the future.
I was just starting to live. I was just starting to figure out things that I truly wanted to do. I was just gearing up for the amazing things I was capable of, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered anymore.
Andy’s fingers dug into the meat of my thigh, digging in deeper, as if he too was trying to hold on to me like my mom. He dropped his head to my lap, his shoulders shaking, his gargantuan size suddenly looking much smaller.
I placed my hand on his hair, dragging my fingers through the short strands at the back of his head. They needed this; this tiny moment of misery, because I knew that as soon as we stepped out of this office, they would try to pretend that everything was okay.
“I’ll give you a moment,” Doctor Mathias said as he stood up from his chair and started heading toward the door. At the last moment, he turned toward me, for the first time talking directly to me. “We’ll discuss pain relief options for the months that are coming, but in the meantime, just think about what you’d like to do.”
I would like to live, I wanted to tell him.
I would like to wake up from this terrible nightmare. I would like to pretend that none of this was happening, even if just for a moment.
I nodded. “Thank you. For everything.”
“I didn’t really do anything, Sophie. And I’m sorry I didn’t. I’m sorry we aren’t able to do anything about this.”
I was sorry too, but most of all, I was sorry that my loved ones had to go through this.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
It wasn’t supposed to hurt this much.
I was supposed to die in sixty or seventy years in my sleep. I was supposed to have gray hair and a suitcase full of memories, not this tragedy.
I was supposed to be many things, but I wasn’t supposed to die this young.
17
SOPHIE
It was soeasy to forget that the rest of the world kept going as if nothing was happening, while my life was crumbling to pieces.
Three weeks after the competition where I got another seizure, ended up in the hospital, and where I had to face the hardest decision I had ever made, I was finally able to come back home.
Noah stayed with me for as long as he could, but he still had to go back to school and for his practices. I didn’t dare to ask how many classes he missed or how much his coach was going to kill him, but it seemed as if he didn’t give a fuck about the outside world.
Between those four walls inside the hospital, I felt as if I could breathe again.
And wasn’t it fucked up that the place that gave me so much anxiety felt so safe? I knew why, though.
It was Noah and his calming presence. It was Noah and his smiles, and those eyes that still saw too much. It was Noah that didn’t start behaving like I was a different person but kept talking about normal things.
We never discussed the elephant in the room, apart from that first day when he just came, but I could see that he wanted to talk about it. I just wasn’t ready.
