She looked innocently into his eyes. She would lose so much if he were to be lost. She would lose everything.
Neither of them said anything. The two continued to look into each other's eyes. Her started to weld up with tears, and his followed soon after.
"If I do die-" He started to speak his words silently.
"You won't!" She had to stop him in mid sentence, she didn't want to hear the rest, she couldn't hear the rest. "You can't."
He took something off the shelf and reach out his hand with it grasped between his thin and frail fingers. You could tell his illness was draining him of all energy. His spirit tried to live on but his body was to weak, and in return it hurt him inside.
"Can you do me one thing, just one?" He asked
"I'd do anything, anything you would need to be done."
He put the letter into her hand. "Take this to Mama."
She nodded and slipped the letter he had given her into the pocked on her thin jacket. "If they let me leave."
"Just walk out the door yourself. Those damn doctors don't need to know where you are going."
She took a shaky breath in and nodded. "You won't go."
Knock once, it should be enough.
Nonetheless it was. An old woman came trotting down her hallway of the house and opened the door. She looked at the girl standing at her doorstep.
"Hello." The women said in a polite manner. It was rather simple to tell that she had not known who the person in her door way was.
"Um…" She looked at the polite old lady and started to rustle through her pockets. She found the envelope that he had given her earlier. "Madame, I am a patient at St. Mary's hospital. You're son asked me to give this to you."
She reached out her hand towards the mother. The envelope was slightly crumpled up and had Mama scribbled onto the front.
"My, my boy." The mother said. For a moment she hesitated before reaching out her own hand and slipping it out of the girls fingers.
"I will be on my way now." She said, feeling her job was done.
She turned away to make her way back to the hospital to tell him how she delivered the letter.
"Would you like to stay for a sip of tea or a cup of coffee?" The mother said.
She turned around and looked at Mama. She shook her head. "No I best be going. I have an appointment."
As days went by she would take walks through the halls alone. Occasionally she could hear him arguing with someone. Most of the time it was on how he should talk to a shrink.
"Just talk to one of them." An old nurse said to him one day as they brought in a third shrink.
"About what!" He would not stop arguing with the nurse till she gave up.
"Just, about what is on your mind. Your problems."
"What problems, I don't have any problems. How can a dead man have problems? I am going to die! I've accepted it, what more do you want from me?"
She started to break down as she heard his words screamed at the nurse. She knew it was the truth, but she hoped that if it wasn't admitted, she hoped everything would be all right. Her feet started to run off to her room as tears escaped her eyes and ran down her cheeks.
She stayed in her room after that. Her mind wondered if he had seen her run off or if he knew she even heard what he yelled at the nurse. The lights stayed off as she sat on the head of her bed. All the electronics off in the room and her knees kept up to her chin.
Her eyes wandered to the closed door as she heard a slight rasp at it. It's knob turned and opened slightly.
"You there?" His voice came through the crack along with the light from the hallway.
She sighed and then spoke. "Yah I am."
He pushed the door open more and stepped in. His slippered feet dragged along the ground as he walked in and then closed the door. It shut back into place with a silent thud sound.
It was dark again.
"I've hardly seen you today." He said to her as he walked over to the bed.
"Yah I figure today I would-" She stopped in mid sentence. Hardly, the only time she was out is when she over heard his argument. That meant… "Yah."
He got onto the bed and sat at the foot. His legs crossed. His sad eyes looked at her. "Sorry you overheard it." He said
She didn't say anything. She looked down at her bare feet with her head resting on her knees.
"I understand if you are pissed."
She shook her head. "Not pissed… disappointed."
He sighed, "I'm sorry."
"It's just, just so hard to hear it out loud. I know we live in a reality and unfortunately that fact is part of this reality. I was just hoping, wishing, that if no one said anything… It's childish." She ended her thought short.
"No tell me."
"I wished that reality would change and you wouldn't go."
"You are just going to have to accept it." He said "I would turn back time if I could and make sure it didn't get this bad."
She nodded.
"What's your favorite flower?" He asked the question out of the blue.
"Uh," She thought for a moment a little taken of the random question. "Lilies."
"Why?"
"I guess it's because they symbolized new life." She answered his questions
"What about roses?"
"Roses symbolized love. I couldn't love. I couldn't let the person I left in pain. Lilies, since I was little I hoped for a new life."
He didn't say anything for a while. After a small moment of silence he took her hands in his pale stick like fingers.
"You won't leave." He said, "You'll get through this."
She looked up at him. "If you leave I won't be able to stay."
"You will have to."
It had been a week since they heard the news, a week exactly. She didn't get out of her bed till noon, even though she had been awake since six in the morning. She just laid there for four hours staring at the wall.
She got up at noon and placed her feet on the floor. Her was warm until she placed it on the cold tiles. She got up and slipped on her slippers. She looked around the room, her blinds were shut and so was the door.
Her frizzed hair was all knotted together in the back. She quickly gave it a brush through and then grabbed her sweater and put it on.
The hallway was much more brighter than her room. She looked around at all the people in the hall. A pair of young children held onto their mother as they walked past her. The children looked at her with wide eyes. It might have been their first visit in a hospital.
A nurse walked past her. She tapped the nurse on her shoulder slightly.
"Oh yes do you need some assistance?" the nurse asked her kindly.
"I was just wondering if the patient in room 307 is out or still in his room."
"Oh dear he had some problems last night, we really doubt he will be out of his room at all today."
She looked at the nurse stricken. She hoped the problems weren't too severe. "Thank you very much."
Her steps had quickened. She walked over to his room. Room 312, 311, 310, 308, there is the nurse station, room 307. She knocked on the door three times before pushing it open.
"Hello?" She said.
"Come in dear." That wasn't the sound of a nurse's voice. Not unless they got a new nurse.
She walked into the room. It looked quite different from hers. The window blinds were wide open and it was full of light. Her head turned towards the bed. She noticed him lying underneath the blanket with the mother taking a glass of water and placing it next to him.
"Hello darling." The mother said to her.
"Hello Madame."
"Well why would you be visiting my boy today?" Mama asked her.
"I, I heard that there was a problem." She said
"Oh nothing to worry about dear, just a small complication."
"Mama, you of all people should know it's not a small complication, I could only wish my life was a small complication."
The mother sighed, "I'm sorry."
"Um…" she felt a little uneasy with mother and son arguing. They seemed as though they were really close but had their differences at time. "So what did happen?"
"It hurts, it just hurts all over." He said to her as he looked down at his lap.
The mother looked at both of them.
"I think I may go down and get a coffee." She said before stepping out of the door.
"I have to say this, I want to die." He continued after his mother walked out of the room.
She could feel her heart shatter in a millions of pieces, but how could she blame him. Yet, she could feel each fragment of her heart fall down and hit the floor, shattering more as they hit the linoleum. She fell into the chair next to his bed a slunk down.
"I am sick and tired of this pain." He continued on when she said nothing. "I was sick in tired of everything they tried to do for me, remove it, chemo, nothing helped. In the end they told me I was going to die, and now, now all I do it wait to hit the ground."
She started to cry, and then wondered why she always had to be so emotional. She felt the tears run down her cheeks and through her lips. She tasted the salt on her tongue.
He lifted up his hand and wiped a couple tears by her eyes away with his fingers. As his fingers slipped off her face she took it in her hands.
"I can't stand to hear yourself say that."
She held up his hand to her lips and just stared into space. Neither of them said anything.
She now stands at a grave; her gaze wanders to a hole in the ground. Her hands tremble as they grasp onto a bouquet of lilies. She moves her head and then stares at the skyline; tears came from her eyes and rolled down her cheeks.
The mother came up to her. The other families were already making their own way into their vehicles, ready to head to their homes, hotels or wherever they were planned to be. Mama takes her hand and puts into the black pocket of her blazer and then drew out a piece of paper. They both watches it softly float down in the air landing on the ebony casket. She places her hand on the young women's shoulder.
"Sweet heart." The mother speaks these words gently to her.
"I wish it was me." Her voice shakes "He was just to young."
"Darling, it was just his time." Mama tries to calm her down.
"That's bull." Her voice becomes slightly stronger and sharper; only to return to it's unease. "He died tragically young."
The mother sighs softly and looks into the hole. She then turns her head to look back at the cars. "Dear I will be waiting in the car for you."
Mama turns around and made her way up the hill to her own car. It seems that the young women didn't even take notice of the mother's leaving. She just kept on staring out into the musky gray sky.
"Why?" The word rolls off her tongue after a quite lengthy period of silence. "God that's all I want to know."
With a soft thump she sinks to her knees. The tears flow out more frequently as she holds her head in her hands. She lifts her head and takes a brief look around the cold cemetery. The bland sky seems to make everything worse. She places the bouquet next to her. Her face is already streaked with tears and running mascara.
"I never said it out loud." She mutters the words silently to herself. "It seemed that closer and closer the time came, the more and more you made me upset. I got upset with the words you said, the actions you took."
She bites her lip to try to fight back the tears that come streaming down. The takes her finger tips and just scans them across her face. They fall down and clenches into a fist. She puts her hand back by the flowers and curls her fingers around the stems, grasping them and putting them back onto her lap. She admires the flowers as she runs her hand across each blade of grass.
She let the bouquet fall out of her hand and fall into the hole. She watches them fall six feet down with sadness. They softly land on the coffin without making a sound. One red rose broke the image of white on black.
"I love you." She says.
She goes into her pocket and then takes out a black marker. She glances over at the marble tombstone and the quickly takes a look over at the car still parked waiting for her. She takes the cap off and quickly scribbles something onto the stone.
She pushes herself off the hard ground and looks back to the mother's waiting car once again. She takes one last look at the headstone.
"Wait for me." She spoke to nobody once again.
Just before heading up the hill she wipes away her tears away with her sleeve. She takes one last quick look into the hole and walks off.
On the stone was crossed out the boy's name. Replacing the fine careful lettering of his given name was the girl's scribbled word's reading "The Patient."